Tonight’s WNBA Draft, like the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, will be a good indicator of a “new normal” for women’s hoops telecasts. The Caitlin Clark draft telecast drew a record of just under 2.5 million viewers on ESPN two years ago, and last year was the second-best with 1.3 million for a Paige Bueckers-led class. Prior to Clark, the record for a WNBA Draft audience was just 601,000 in 2004.
For those keeping score, TNT Sports’ 18.3 million viewers for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship this year is only the company’s second-best viewership figure all time. The top remains 22.6 million for Kentucky-Wisconsin in the 2015 semifinal. TNT Sports never broke 16 million for any NBA game.
I was a little surprised last week when Scott Van Pelt said he wouldn’t be taking the 5pm ET “SportsCenter” hosting duties. Late games have meant a number of late nights for SVP. But then I saw the audience numbers for ESPN studio shows in Q1. SVP’s “SportsCenter” leads all studio shows, which makes sense coming off so many big games, and that window is around double what the 5pm “SC” gets.
