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Put aside the records the WNBA has set this year.
Yes, the league has seen exceptional growth in TV ratings and attendance through the season’s opening months. National broadcasts averaged 1.32 million viewers — triple the average of 462,000 last year — and the games have drawn the largest collective audience the league has seen in 26 years for the opening month of a season.
Caitlin Clark — who made more history Wednesday night, breaking the WNBA’s single-game assists record — has been credited with a great deal of this growth, bringing more eyeballs to the league than at any other time in recent memory following her record-breaking college run with Iowa.
Even more eyes will be on the league this weekend with the league’s All-Star Game between the USA Olympians, including the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu, and a team of WNBA All-Stars, including rookies Clark and Angel Reese, in front of a sold-out crowd in Phoenix. The stakes for that game matter, Stewart said Tuesday. (Just don’t expect to see Clark or Ionescu in the 3-point contest.)