Once again, the narrative spinning from the WNBA and its media partners seems designed to tell a particular story – one of unprecedented growth, exploding popularity, and a league finally standing on its own two feet, even without its biggest star. The headlines blared after the 2025 WNBA Finals: “Most watched in 25 years!” a triumph for women’s basketball, a testament to its burgeoning mainstream appeal. But beneath the celebratory pronouncements and the carefully curated statistics lies a much more nuanced, and frankly, unsettling truth. A closer examination of the data, the methodology, and the selective comparisons reveals a pattern of obfuscation, a deliberate attempt to shape perception rather than reflect reality. This isn’t just about inconvenient numbers; it’s about a concerted effort to minimize the undeniable “Caitlin Clark effect” and push an agenda that fundamentally misunderstands the true drivers of interest in the league.

To truly grasp the extent of this narrative control, we must first look back at the 2024 season. Caitlin Clark’s arrival electrified women’s basketball, leading to record-shattering viewership for March Madness, the WNBA Draft, and the WNBA All-Star Game. Her Iowa-South Carolina National Championship clash in 2024 drew an astonishing 18.9 million viewers. When Clark joined the Indiana Fever, her games became must-watch television, drawing millions of eyes that had never before tuned into the WNBA. This was not a modest bump; it was an seismic shift in engagement.

Fast forward to 2025, and the media’s approach began to show its hand. In March Madness, with Clark no longer on the collegiate stage, ESPN’s reporting became conspicuously selective. For the second round, Sweet 16, and Elite 8, viewership numbers were compared to 2023, conveniently skipping over the record-breaking 2024 figures. By the time the Final Four and National Championship arrived, ESPN stopped drawing comparisons altogether. The reason was starkly evident: an honest comparison to 2024 would have revealed a drop in viewership of over 10 million viewers. This wasn’t an oversight; it was a deliberate omission designed to avoid confronting the undeniable impact of Clark’s absence.

The pattern continued with the 2025 WNBA Draft. ESPN proudly announced a 119% increase in draft viewership. Impressive, until you read the fine print. The comparison was, once again, to 2023. Had they compared it to the 2024 draft, where Clark was the undisputed No. 1 pick, the truth would have been grim: viewership had plummeted by 49%, with half the audience gone. The same trick was pulled for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game. A headline-grabbing 158% increase in viewership was reported, compared to 2023. Yet, the 2024 All-Star Game, featuring Caitlin Clark, had attracted 3.4 million viewers. In 2025, that number dropped to 2.2 million, a staggering 36% decline – and that’s a conservative estimate, given that Clark was still visible on the sidelines coaching, proving that even her mere presence could draw eyes.

These repeated instances of selective data comparison expose a clear agenda: to downplay Caitlin Clark’s unparalleled influence and artificially inflate the appearance of organic league growth. It begs the question: if the growth is so robust, why the need for such meticulous statistical gymnastics?

The most egregious example of this misleading narrative emerged with the 2025 WNBA Finals. Media outlets trumpeted Game 1’s 1.9 million viewers, peaking at 2.5 million, as the “most watched Game 1 of the WNBA Finals in 28 years.” On the surface, this looked like a monumental achievement, especially compared to the 1.1 million viewers for Game 1 the previous year. But this headline, like so many before it, omitted a crucial, game-changing piece of information: a fundamental shift in Nielsen’s methodology for measuring television ratings.

Effective September 2, 2025, Nielsen implemented its “big data plus panel” methodology. Prior to this, Nielsen’s national panel relied on data from approximately 42,000 households. The new system, however, incorporates data from 75 million devices, exponentially increasing the sample size and, as Nielsen itself acknowledged, generally resulting in higher reported viewership for all sports broadcasts. This is not a subtle adjustment; it’s a complete overhaul of how ratings are calculated. Consequently, any direct, honest comparison between 2025 viewership numbers and those from previous years is, quite simply, impossible. This season marks “year one” of an entirely new data set, rendering comparisons akin to comparing apples to very different oranges.

The 1.9 million figure, while technically accurate under the new measurement, cannot be used to gauge genuine growth. It is inflated by a methodological change, a critical context that was often buried deep within articles, if mentioned at all. Most readers, accustomed to skimming headlines, would see the large number and the percentage increase, immediately assuming the league was indeed booming. But understanding the data shift reveals a far less impressive reality.

The true picture became even clearer after Game 1. Despite the new, inflated measurement system, viewership for Finals Games 2 and 3 dropped sharply, falling as low as 1.2 million viewers. This decline is particularly revealing when considering that, under the old measurement system, Caitlin Clark’s regular season games with the Fever routinely outperformed these Finals numbers. Her exhibition game against Brazil, for instance, drew 1.3 million viewers under the less flattering old rating system—a preseason game outdrawing a WNBA Finals game, even with the new methodology boosting the latter’s numbers. This stark comparison alone screams volumes about who truly drives interest in the league.

Just as they did during March Madness, once the Finals ratings showed a decline after Game 1, the media’s narrative shifted. The aggressive year-over-year comparisons vanished. Suddenly, talk of record-breaking growth for Games 2 and 3 was muted, and for good reason. When Game 2’s 1.2 million viewers are honestly compared to Game 2 of the 2024 Finals (which garnered 1.34 million viewers, peaking at 1.82 million, under the old methodology), it becomes evident that even with the inflated metrics, 2025 viewership was lower. If the old system were still in place, the real viewership for Games 2 and 3 would likely have fallen below one million, a catastrophic outcome for a league touting unprecedented success.

Yet, despite this sobering reality, outlets like Front Office Sports continued to run headlines celebrating the 2025 WNBA Finals as the “most watched in 25 years.” The crucial caveat about Nielsen’s methodology change was, once again, relegated to the fifth paragraph, a single sentence that most readers would never encounter. This isn’t mere journalistic oversight; it’s a strategic editorial decision to promote a desired narrative, even if it requires sidestepping inconvenient truths.

The motivation behind this concerted effort to spin the numbers is clear. Since Caitlin Clark’s entry into the league, team values have more than doubled, and the WNBA is keen to present this as broad-based, sustainable growth, rather than a phenomenon primarily driven by one player. The league wants to convince sponsors, broadcasters, and investors that its future is secure regardless of who is on the court. They highlight the record 41 nationally televised games for the Fever, the upgraded arenas to accommodate Clark’s games, and the addition of an expansion team (which naturally inflates overall attendance figures) as signs of systemic success.

But the underlying reality is that the overwhelming surge in interest remains inextricably linked to Caitlin Clark. When she returns to the court, and her games inevitably draw 3 or 4 million viewers under the new Nielsen system, the league will undoubtedly hail it as “WNBA growth,” subtly avoiding giving Clark the credit she is due. This predictable pattern, from selective comparisons to buried disclaimers, has become an unfortunate burden for those who genuinely follow the league and appreciate Clark’s groundbreaking impact.

Ultimately, the 2025 WNBA Finals ratings serve as a critical case study in how narratives can be constructed and manipulated in sports media. While the league undoubtedly hopes to foster organic growth, the current strategy of downplaying its most significant catalyst – Caitlin Clark – through misleading statistics risks alienating the very fans who are now paying attention. The truth is never what it looks like on the surface; it’s always deeper, always more calculated, and in this instance, it reveals a league grappling with the uncomfortable reality that its celebrated boom is, for now, built on a foundation far more fragile than its headlines suggest. The illusion of growth, meticulously maintained, ultimately overshadows the genuine potential that lies beneath it.