It was a game that didn’t count and still the remote controls were flipping over to watch Caitlin Clark.

Sunday’s WNBA preseason game that featured Clark’s return to Iowa was a big hit on ESPN. The contest between Clark’s Indiana Fever and the Brazil women’s national team drew 1.3 million viewers, more than the league’s average rating (1.2 million) for last season’s regular-season games on ESPN.

ESPN said the audience peaked at 1.6 million viewers. The ratings are more impressive when you consider the game was completely one-sided with the Fever winning 108-44 after holding a 70-24 halftime advantage.

Clark played 19 minutes and scored 16 points during her return to Carver-Hawkeye Arena on the Iowa campus. Clark was a megastar for the Hawkeyes before beginning her professional career last season.

According to The Athletic, only two NBA preseason games since 2010 drew better ratings than Sunday’s game. Both of them involved LeBron James, one in 2017 when James was with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the other in 2018 for his first preseason game with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Indiana opens the regular season on May 17 against the Chicago Sky. The Fever will have 41 of their 44 regular-season games nationally televised or streamed.

–Field Level Media