WNBA All-Star Game Sees Ratings Drop Without Caitlin Clark
The 2025 WNBA All-Star Game (and the overall All-Star weekend) felt like a pivotal point in not only the league's current season, but also for its future.
This is because the ongoing Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations between the WNBA and the league's players were one of the major storylines throughout the three days players were in Indianapolis, Indiana. And given that these players are currently stating their case for vastly improved salaries in that next CBA, it felt important that the weekend attracted a lot of attention in order to prove the WNBA's drawing power (and revenue potential) in this new era.
But a brutal blow was dealt to the league's chances of drawing a major audience when star guard Caitlin Clark announced that she wouldn't be competing in the three-point contest or the All-Star Game (both of which she was planning to do) because of a groin injury.
Given Clark's unprecedented star power, her being confined to the Fever's Gainbridge Fieldhouse Arena sidelines was always going to impact ratings. And Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports revealed just how much it did with a July 22 X post that read, "WNBA All-Star Game
"2.19 million viewers on ABC
"Down 36% from last year (3.44M) when Caitlin Clark and teammates played the Olympic team".
WNBA All-Star Game
— Ryan Glasspiegel (@sportsrapport) July 22, 2025
2.19 million viewers on ABC
Down 36% from last year (3.44M) when Caitlin Clark and teammates played the Olympic team @FOS
While a 36% ratings drop is obviously not ideal, it's important to note that this 2025 All-Star Game was still a huge success, considering other years aside from 2024.
The 2023 All-Star Game (which came when Clark was still in college) drew 850,000 viewers, and this 2025 contest is only the second in WNBA history to draw more than 2 million viewers, according to Colin Salao of Front Office Sports.
It would have been fascinating to see what these numbers would have looked like if Clark had been competing last weekend.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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