“Told you so!” Stephen A. Smith highlights 50% blow for WNBA in absence of Caitlin Clark
Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark ending her season early has had an impact on WNBA viewership as playoffs continue.
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Stephen A. Smith insists Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark is the sole reason for WNBA's increase in viewers
With the WNBA in its final leg, only four teams remain in the playoffs. Leading superstars A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu headline those games as the battle continues to crown the next WNBA champions. At the same time, Caitlin Clark has packed her bags and started her off season. This is after her Indiana Fever fell in the first round of the playoffs. But that loss, has also adversely affected someone else.
It is not someone, rather the league itself, as viewership ratings have plummeted since Clark ended her outstanding rookie season. So much so that ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith took to his show, The Stephen A. Smith Show to talk about it:
Game 1 of the Aces Liberty matchup drew on Sunday drew an average of 929K viewers. It’s a good number for the WNBA on an NFL Sunday. However, that was down nearly 50% from last Sunday’s Fever Sun contest. Do you want me to just say I told you so! Caitlin Clark is the golden goose.
Stephen A. Smith said
The longtime analyst hit the point home that he had envisioned this happening down the line, as he knew that no one was pulling the viewers on to the WNBA more than Caitlin Clark.
Stephen A. Smith went on to add that the numbers for the second-round playoff battle between the Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty would have been more if only Clark had been a part of Team USA’s Paris Olympics squad, as he believes she would have drawn the global audience towards the WNBA.
Steven A Smith on the viewership drop for the WNBA playoffs & Caitlin Clark #FeverRising #WNBA pic.twitter.com/FYLP9rA92f
— Krysta (@Krysta____) October 4, 2024
If her influence could bring almost double the fans from last season’s playoffs to the Aces Liberty game, then the global audience would have increased those numbers. He feels it is a missed opportunity to grow women’s basketball.
Stephen A. Smith suggests Caitlin Clark’s game proved her fame
In the latter part of that discussion on his show, Stephen A. Smith talked about the jealousy of WNBA players, past and present, towards Caitlin Clark. He argued with this analogy:
There are very very few people, but there are some out there who resent the fact that this young white girl came out there and did her thing. Rookie of the Year, one of the top scorers after the Olympic games. She put on a show validating all the attention she was receiving.
Stephen A. Smith remarked
The analyst mentioned that whatever he and others advocated for Caitlin Clark initially drew a lot of flak.
Caitlin Clark’s performances in the first half of the season somewhere helped their point. But in the second half, her performances landed her in the MVP awards race. That is when the Indiana Fever rookie’s game matched the fame.
It ended up with the same players and media personnel to do a 180 and acknowledge her. Smith believes had they acknowledged the rookie from the start, those players would have benefitted from her incredible following.
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Joseph Varghese
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