Viral Caitlin Clark WNBA Playoff Ratings Drop Claim Gets Debunked

Anybody who follows women's basketball could have predicted that WNBA Playoff viewership would decline once Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever were eliminated.

The question was how much viewership would drop when the Fever lost to the Las Vegas Aces in the first round. The answer is a lot, but not nearly as much as several viral claims have conveyed.

On Tuesday, an X account made an unverified and unsourced post that read, "WNBA Playoffs lost 70-76% of their viewers After Caitlin Clark was eliminated".

The post went viral, amassing over a million views in about 18 hours. Unfortunately, that percentage isn't even close to accurate.

Other accounts have reported even more inflated numbers, as high at 78%. This was also inaccurate.

Several reporters have since provided more accurate data, and also provided their math.

The correct way to find the true percentage drop is to take the TV viewership that Fever and the Aces had in Game 1 of their first-round series and compare of to the viewership for the two Game 1 matchups in the WNBA Semifinals, which were on Sunday.

USA Today reporter Christine Brennan shared this information with an X post on Wednesday that read, "2.11M Fever-Aces ABC / 1.17M Liberty–Dream ABC / 1.12M Aces–Valkyries NBC/Peacock."

A bit of good news for the WNBA: Instead of losing 55% of TV audience when Fever go out (info below), the drop for semis Game 1 vs Game 1 of Fever-Aces a week earlier is 44-47%:

2.11M Fever-Aces ABC

1.17M Liberty–Dream ABC

1.12M Aces–Valkyries NBC/Peacock

All Sun vs NFL games https://t.co/aE0QW5Bh5E
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) October 7, 2026

Colin Salao of Front Office Sports provided the same viewership numbers in his own X post.

These two posts prove the facts: viewership dropped 44-47% when the Fever were eliminated from the numbers their games reached. That's still a considerable number, but much smaller than 70% or anything higher than that.

WNBA Viewership Should Still Be Celebrated, Despite Drop After Fever Loss

Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have been, are, and will continue to be the biggest draw in women's basketball. This isn't a secret, and it isn't a surprise to see a lot of the playoff viewership drop once they made a first-round exit.

But the bottom line is that even with the Fever now eliminated, viewership is still at an extremely high level. Playoff games constantly surpassing a million viewers is nothing to scoff at and should be celebrated, regardless of who is or isn't on the court. And these numbers will continue to increase as the playoffs progress.

There are still four elite teams competing for a championship. Great games are ahead of us, and this is the most exciting time of the year for women's basketball fans. That's a big win, even after the Fever lost.

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