The Fever are breaking records again. They are breaking records again right now. And they are doing it in style. The Indiana Fever, as you can see right here, drew a grand total of 743K viewers for a preseason game. That’s actually crazy. Do you remember the way everyone was like, “Oh yeah, Caitlin Clark.” It was a phrase from Stephen A. Smith. It was like, “Caitlin Clark is such a big draw that she’s able to get a million viewers on Ion. Caitlin Clark is such a big draw that for her playing again, this is the average viewers.”
For her playing 20 minutes drew 750K on Ion. It is plus 76% on last year’s preseason. Plus 129% versus last year’s second preseason game. It was, if I am not mistaken, the very first preseason game. But literally having it plus 76% on last year is wild. That is wild. Am I the only person that believes that that is actually a crazy number?
Dallas Wings versus Las Vegas Aces last year was a preseason opener. It was Paige Bueckers’s first game. And then Brazil national team versus the Chicago Sky. I was live for both of those games, actually. I think I was live for both of them. And I will not be live unfortunately for the Angel Reese game today. I was considering it, but I’m like, you know what? I’m behind on videos, so I want to get a couple of videos out. I’m definitely not watching the Portland Fire.
But I kind of want to watch the Connecticut Sun and the Toronto Tempo on one screen. I want to watch the other game on the other screen. So I kind of want to watch both of them at the same time, which would be kind of interesting because I want to see just how teams are looking in general.
But yeah, it is not a surprise. The Indiana Fever are killing it in viewership. But this might be season 30 getting started. The Fever versus New York Liberty is the most watched preseason game ever on Ion. I wonder what the preseason was last year. Peaked at 822,000 viewers. Wow. To average this many viewers is wild. Caitlin didn’t play that much. It’s actually kind of crazy.
The Fever has all 44 games on national television. Is there anyone still out there that doesn’t get it yet? Nobody doesn’t get it. They just are lying to themselves and others. Nobody actually doesn’t get it. If we’re being real here, no one actually does not get it.
At least when it comes to people saying this, “Oh yeah, the Fever shouldn’t have any national TV coverage.” Others have to share this. Be like, “Oh yeah, but other teams if they got that coverage will get that amount of viewers.” Well yeah, it’s nearly double the viewers of last year. It is nearly double the viewers of last year.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if Paige Bueckers’ first preseason game was the most viewed preseason game on Ion. Over double the viewers of Angel Reese’s first preseason game last year on Ion. They are still really, really good viewership numbers. Really, really good viewership.
And yeah, look, Han Xu and Hailey Van Lith impact. Fair. I thought Caitlin Clark effect is over. Where is Jason Whitlock to hear this?
There’s a big difference between Caitlin Clark being the biggest star and Caitlin Clark being the mania. In the summer of 2024, Caitlin Clark was probably the biggest star in American sports. She was. Caitlin Clark is not currently the biggest star in American sports. There is currently an NBA playoffs going on that is way better than the 2024 playoffs. The Boston Celtics sleepwalked to the finals and destroyed the Dallas Mavericks in the finals. Luka Dončić was playing on one leg.
And then it was the worst draft of all time after a terrible college season where UConn Huskies women’s basketball went back to back. It was the least hyped draft of all time. No one cared about Summer League. The biggest story was that Alex Sarr looked like he didn’t know how to play basketball after he got drafted.
It was a summer where there was nothing. Then there was the playoffs with Victor Wembanyama, which is a different animal. And there’s a World Cup. In terms of the casual fan, I also don’t think the World Cup is going to be like World Cups of years past because it’s a really weird one.
Be fair, the viewership experience of going to games is going to be different because it’s going to cost like a thousand dollars a game, whereas in Qatar it was a hundred. Hypothetically, if you’re a French person, it would have been cheaper for you to fly to Qatar, stay in Qatar for the month, and go to every single France game than it would be to fly to America, stay in America, go to two of France’s games, and fly back.
So yeah, World Cup as a spectator event if you’re not American is not ideal. It’s not ideal at all.
But yeah, it’s one of those things where someone said this seems low. I don’t think it’s low. It’s a preseason game. Just like how there was 10,000 people at the preseason game that showed up.
The fact that the Indiana Fever’s preseason game actually had more viewers on average than a non-Indiana Fever regular season game on ESPN, that is the craziest thing. An Indiana Fever preseason game on Ion had more viewership than eight out of 12 of 15 WNBA teams playing on primetime on ESPN. And that does matter. That really does matter.
So yeah. What do you guys think? Obviously as far as national TV games, this was a bad game, the Aces versus the Wings. They cooked Paige. Paige got like it was rough. It was a rough couple of games from Paige Bueckers last year. It was a rough couple of games from her in general to start off the year, but she figured it out. She had that 35 piece on Seattle.
But yeah, look. The Indiana Fever is still by a country mile the biggest draw. There’s no other team that is even close. If there was another team that was even close, it might be the Wings, but that is only a hypothetical because they have back-to-back number one overall picks.
And I hate to say this because it shouldn’t be relevant, but the fact that their two best players or their two number one picks in a row may or may not be dating is part of the reason why the Dallas Wings are relevant in the public eye. It shouldn’t be the case. It should be strictly ball. Obviously, they don’t want to talk about any of that stuff and they’re well within their right to do that.
Part of the reason why this team is so relevant is because of that. And it shouldn’t be, but it is. Anyway, see you guys.
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