Unrivaled viewing figures without Caitlin Clark paint interesting picture after Angel Reese claim.

Unrivaled’s first slate of games was rife with thrilling buzzer-beaters, lively moments,and fierce competition, but the brand-new league has yet to achieve the meteoric rise that the WNBA enjoyed after Caitlin Clark’s arrival.

On Friday, Unrivaled – a three-on-three league co-founded by New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier – debuted with a splash with two games, Lunar Owls vs. Mist and Vinyl vs. Lunar Owls. The matchups drew considerable attention, as TNT and truTV averaged a combined 313,000 during the first contest and 311,000 for the second.

The pair of games immediately made history as the highest-watched women’s basketball telecasts on TNT and truTV. It should be noted, however, that the networks have mainly broadcast women’s college basketball in the past.

Although Unrivaled is very much still in its infancy stages, it has a ways to go before catching up to the WNBA. During the regular season, nationally televised games of the league averaged 657,000 viewers – nearly double the 364,000 peak that Unrivaled’s doubleheader achieved.

Fever games, meanwhile, averaged a whopping 1.18 million viewers. Clark and Indiana additionally managed to shatter the single-season record for average attendance (17,036) and total attendance (340,715).

Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell, who also happens to be Collier’s husband, saw the early viewership statistics as a strong starting point – insisting that they weren’t anticipating numbers comparable to the WNBA right off the bat.

“We aren’t expecting WNBA viewership numbers. I think what we’re trying to do is get better from week to week, put out a great product, focus on the athletes. If we do that, I think good things will happen,” he said.

“We put ourselves in a great position to be successful right away. But it’s a marathon. We’re not running out there from Day 1 trying to get millions of viewers out of the gate. It would be tremendous. But we’re going to be here for a while. We have some time to build this and get this momentum rolling.”

Unrivaled’s early viewership – especially when compared to last year’s Fever game numbers – is indicative of just how great an influence Clark has on women’s basketball. Yet, speaking to reporters last June, Chicago Sky star Angel Reese asserted that the 23-year-old is far from the only person who should be credited with growing the sport.

“People are talking about women’s basketball, you never would think they’d be talking about women’s basketball,” Reese said at the time. “People are pulling up to games. We got celebrities coming to games and sold-out arenas just because of one single game.

“I’ll look back in 20 years and be like, the reason why we’re watching women’s basketball is not just because of one person. It’s because of me, too. I want y’all to realize that.”