The 2025 WNBA Playoffs were supposed to showcase the league’s growth, its stars, and the momentum built from an exciting regular season. Instead, what the numbers are revealing is something the league hoped to avoid: a steep decline in ratings whenever Caitlin Clark is not on the court.

The league’s brightest star has been sidelined due to injury, and the impact has been undeniable. Without her, every single playoff matchup so far has failed to reach one million viewers, leaving analysts and fans debating just how dependent the WNBA has become on one player’s presence.

When Clark played earlier this year, her games consistently soared past the million-viewer mark on ABC, ESPN, and CBS. Those were the kinds of numbers the WNBA had been chasing for decades. But the playoffs without her have painted a very different picture.

The Indiana Fever’s first playoff game against the Atlanta Dream — a matchup that would normally be headlined by Clark — drew just 951,000 viewers on ABC. While that might not sound catastrophic in isolation, the number is nearly half of what a Fever playoff game pulled in last year when Clark was on the floor, which topped 1.8 million. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

The ripple effects extend beyond Indiana. Other playoff matchups have seen modest increases compared to last season, but they still failed to crack the million-viewer ceiling. The New York Liberty versus the Phoenix Mercury pulled in just under 500,000, while the Seattle Storm’s battle with the Las Vegas Aces hovered in the mid-400,000s.

Even the much-anticipated Minnesota-Golden State clash, which did better than most with around 680,000 viewers, fell short of reaching that elusive million mark. These numbers expose a sobering reality: without Caitlin Clark, the league’s viewership ceiling remains stubbornly low.

What makes this situation more striking is the fact that the WNBA has been touting steady year-over-year growth. During the 2025 regular season, the league averaged roughly 969,000 viewers across major networks, which represented a slight increase over the prior year.

Clark’s appearances were responsible for many of those spikes, with several Fever games clearing 1.2 million. The playoff collapse in her absence makes it harder for the league to sustain that narrative of growth. Instead, the story becomes one of reliance, where a single player appears to carry an outsized portion of the league’s visibility.

Critics argue this reveals a structural weakness. While other stars like A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Angel Reese, and Sabrina Ionescu draw attention, none have consistently moved the ratings needle like Clark.

This is not just about her on-court performance, but about the cultural and media wave she represents. From her record-breaking college career to her early impact in the WNBA, Clark has been the face of women’s basketball. When she’s absent, the drop-off suggests casual fans aren’t sticking around for the rest of the product. That dynamic is troubling for a league that wants to build long-term sustainability beyond a single superstar.

Defenders of the league point out that context matters. Many playoff games aired opposite NFL broadcasts, which dominate television ratings across all demographics. That alone can suppress numbers.

In addition, the WNBA still struggles with scheduling and promotion compared to men’s leagues, often placing its marquee matchups on networks or time slots where they are overshadowed by bigger sports properties. From this perspective, Clark’s absence isn’t the sole reason ratings dipped; rather, it simply amplified existing challenges.

Still, the contrast is too glaring to ignore. When Clark plays, the WNBA has proof it can capture mainstream attention. When she doesn’t, the viewership slides back to the league’s long-time averages.

This has sparked debates about whether the WNBA has become too dependent on Clark, and whether the league has done enough to elevate its other stars. A healthy ecosystem shouldn’t collapse in visibility when one player goes down. Yet that is exactly what the numbers suggest is happening.

Social media reactions have also added fuel to the fire. Fans and critics alike are pointing fingers at league marketing, arguing that the WNBA has poured too much of its energy into selling Caitlin Clark as the face of the sport, while failing to generate equal buzz for others.

“This is what happens when you build the entire house around one player,” one fan wrote on X. Others countered that the league is simply following the money and attention where it naturally flows — and that Clark’s ability to draw casual fans is something unprecedented in the women’s game.

For the Fever, this development only heightens the pressure surrounding Clark’s recovery. Fair or not, her presence on the court is tied directly to both the team’s and the league’s financial health. Sponsors, broadcasters, and executives know that her return could be the difference between middling playoff ratings and breakout numbers that rival men’s sports broadcasts.

This creates an uncomfortable narrative where the league’s fortunes feel tethered to the well-being of a single 23-year-old player still navigating her first professional seasons.

The long-term question is how the WNBA can leverage Clark’s stardom to lift everyone else. The NBA went through similar growing pains in its early decades, with ratings often spiking only around marquee stars like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan.

Over time, the league learned how to build storylines, rivalries, and team brands that drew viewers regardless of who was playing. The WNBA may be in the early stages of that same evolution. Clark is the entry point for millions of casual fans; the challenge is turning that into sustained interest across the board.

Until then, however, the numbers don’t lie. Without Caitlin Clark, the WNBA playoffs have failed to generate the kind of mainstream buzz that makes headlines.

The ceiling for viewership without her is firmly below one million, a threshold that now feels like the measuring stick for legitimacy. Every game falling short of that mark underscores just how much weight Clark carries. The league may want to present itself as a collection of stars, but the audience’s behavior shows otherwise.

In the end, the 2025 postseason may be remembered less for what happens on the court and more for what happened off it — a statistical reminder that the WNBA, for all its progress, is still inextricably tied to one player’s presence.

The disaster narrative may sound harsh, but for networks and sponsors looking at the numbers, it’s hard to spin otherwise. Without Caitlin Clark, the league is struggling to break through. And unless that changes, the WNBA’s playoff future will remain uncertain, waiting for its brightest star to return and bring the millions of viewers back with her.