How Does the WNBA Culture War Factor Into Ratings?

It’s a confusing time to be a WNBA fan.

On the one hand, the league has hit record ratings highs, with the Aug. 16 matchup between the Atlanta Dream and the Indiana Fever marking the most-watched WNBA game ever on cable.

But that success came as the league has been caught in the throes of a culture war, with political controversies surrounding Fever players Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham dominating discourse about the league and fueling chatter on conservative media — including Fox News, which has devoted 13 and a half hours this summer to covering the WNBA, per Media Matters.

The controversy has fueled attention and social chatter for women’s professional basketball, but crediting it for the league’s viewership victories does a disservice to the actual game play. Women’s sports have been on an upward ratings trajectory over the past couple years and the WNBA in particular received a shot in the arm from Clark, whose sharp-shooting ability has served as a tide that’s lifting all teams.

The haters, meanwhile, aren’t nearly as big a factor as social media would indicate.

“The people that want to see it fail will use this as a reason for not watching, when they probably were never watching to begin with,” veteran sports journalist and Northwestern professor Melissa Isaacson told TheWrap. “The people who are really women’s basketball fans will continue to enjoy it as a product that continues to improve.”

For anyone unfamiliar with the drama, it boils down to two main controversies. The first centered on Clark, who was a major factor in the ratings records for the 2024 NCAA Women’s Championship. Clark’s stardom has remained, though an ugly dynamic has emerged where nearly every move made against her by a Black player sparks claims from the right that it is racially motivated, to the extent that 11 Republican lawmakers wrote WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying she had not addressed “repeated acts of unnecessary physical hostility and violence” against Clark.

The other side of the controversy involves Cunningham, who has been dubbed “MAGA Barbie” and become the right’s favorite WNBA player, after voicing her opposition to transgender women playing in women’s sports. The furor led to two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, trolling trans rights advocates by citing their intentions to enter into the 2027 draft as they test the gender eligibility requirements.

The WNBA subsequently shut that down. And to be clear, no one takes them seriously.

While the WNBA league has become the right’s latest obsession, that intense interest will eventually cool as the next outrage takes center stage. And given that most right-wingers are engaging with the league on external platforms like social media or Fox News, fading attention might not even play much of a factor — if at all — in viewership.

For the most part, the WNBA’s most loyal fans have not been swayed by the drama. It’s unlikely any true fans will stray.

With the pipeline of incoming talent from the college ranks, USC Annenberg professor Miki Turner told TheWrap, “the dub is here to stay.”

“It’s been here 30 years already, and profit margins were low for about the first 10-20 years of its existence, so the fact that it has survived and expanded gives me hope that they can rise above all of the current drama,” Turner said.

In the grand scheme of things, the controversies shouldn’t faze the growth of the league, which signed an 11-year media rights agreement with Versant for USA Network to present WNBA games starting with the 2026 season.

The way forward requires some “better leadership in the front office” and a strategic approach forward from players as they engage — or don’t — with media, according to Turner. “Players are going to have to not so much watch what they say, but watch how they say it,” Turner said. “Maybe at this point in time, [Caitlin Clark’s] silence is golden.”

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ICYMI:

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