Without Caitlin Clark, Unrivaled Struggles With Poor TV Ratings Again

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Unrivaled, the new women's professional 3-on-3 basketball league in which Caitlin Clark declined to participate, saw a ratings dip in its second week after a poor debut during its first weekend.

As OutKick reported last week, Unrivaled averaged around 312,000 viewers across TNT and TruTV for the first two games in its history. 

Remember that WNBA games that didn't feature Caitlin Clark drew an average of 400K viewers, so Unrivaled without Clark appears less popular than the WNBA without Clark. 

The numbers got worse for Unrivaled as the first weekend continued, too. It drew just 100k viewers on Saturday and 184k on Monday. 

Unrivaled, the new women's professional 3-on-3 basketball league in which Caitlin Clark declined to participate, saw a ratings dip in its second week after a poor debut during its first weekend.

Unrivaled, the new women's professional 3-on-3 basketball league in which Caitlin Clark declined to participate, saw a ratings dip in its second week after a poor debut during its first weekend. 

(Imagn Images)

Those numbers got worse, across-the-board, in Week 2. 

According to Sports Media Watch, Friday night's games averaged 281,000 viewers (down 10% from Week 1), Saturday's games averaged 98,000 (down 2%) and Monday's games averaged 166,000 (down 10%). 

Unrivaled is averaging 194,000 viewers across TNT and truTV through two weeks, more than 50% worse than the average WNBA game without Caitlin Clark. 

Without Caitlin Clark, fans just aren't tuning into Unrivaled, even with Angel Reese playing in the league. 

Clark regularly drew at least one million viewers for her WNBA games, but Unrivaled never expected to touch those numbers. 

However, the league – and it's TV partner, TNT – have to be disappointed that Unrivaled couldn't even reach half the audience of a non-Clark WNBA across its first two weeks. 

It's important to note that Angel Reese, who previously claimed that she was also partially responsible for the WNBA ratings increase, competes in Unrivaled for the Rose Basketball Club. 

Rose has played on four of the six nights, including Saturday when the league drew its worst audience. 

Unfortunately, this new data only confirms what we already knew: Caitlin Clark is the biggest draw in women's basketball. In fact, she might be the ONLY draw in women's basketball. 

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Dan began his sports media career at ESPN, where he survived for nearly a decade. Once the Stockholm Syndrome cleared, he made his way to OutKick. He is secure enough in his masculinity to admit he is a cat-enthusiast with three cats, one of which is named "Brady" because his wife wishes she were married to Tom instead of him.