Having clinched their WNBA playoff spot weeks ago, the Connecticut Sun don’t know which team they’ll face in the first round. Yet now that tickets for their first-round series are on sale, the Sun cleverly shared the probabilities of their potential opponents.
The likely reason for sharing those odds: Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever lead the way at 56.8%, ahead of the Phoenix Mercury and Seattle Storm.
As of press time, the cheapest all-in ticket available for Game 1 of the Sun’s playoff run on Ticketmaster is $93.95, while lower bowl seats facing the east-to-west sidelines are starting at $237. The most expensive ticket is going for $435. (Comparatively on StubHub, the cheapest get-in price, including fees, is $148.) Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena has a capacity of 9,300, the fourth-smallest home court in the league.
“We wanted to give fans more time to get their playoff tickets than we did last season, and because we don’t know our opponent yet, we thought we would just educate prospective buyers on the probability of who we are playing, so they can make the most informed decision,” a Sun spokesperson told Sportico. “Marketing with multiple other fanbases in mind also helps both sales and online engagement.”
The Sun are currently one game behind the Minnesota Lynx for the WNBA’s No. 2 seed, while the Indiana Fever are sixth (the No. 3 and No. 6 seeds will square off in the playoffs’ first round, as will No. 2 and No. 7). Indiana sits 2.5 games behind Seattle for the fifth seed, but is two games ahead of seventh-place Phoenix and former UConn legend Diana Taurasi.
Minnesota and Connecticut will face off Tuesday, giving the Sun a chance to grab the second seed and drop the Lynx into a potential first-round matchup with Clark & Co.
While the Sun’s playoff tickets start at a hefty amount on Ticketmaster, the Lynx announced their postseason seats will start at $30 at the 19,000-seat Target Center.
Connecticut was the first team to feel the Clark effect firsthand in the May 14 season opener. The perennial title contender sold out the Mohegan Sun Arena while 2.12 million viewers watched the game on ESPN2, where the veteran team prevailed over the young and disjointed Fever, 92-71. It was the most-watched WNBA game since the Los Angeles Sparks and now-defunct Houston Comets squared off on NBC during Memorial Day in 2001. That ratings high mark has since been topped several times this season, significant for a league that hadn’t had a single game reach 1 million or more viewers in 16 years.
Indiana (19-17) is a far different team than the one which started the season. With more cohesive play between Clark, Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell, the Fever have won eight of their last 10. Clark, who leads the W in assists at 8.2 per game, along with her 19.2 points, has all but sealed the league’s Rookie of the Year award.
Yet, the Clark effect still faces its biggest test, as Game 1 in each of the four first-round series will air on Sept. 22 on the ESPN family of networks—directly going against NFL games.
ESPN/ABC has exclusive rights to the playoffs, airing games on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ABC. On Wednesday, the Disney sports group announced that it concluded its regular season run with an average of 1.2 million viewers per telecast, a significant raise even when considering the inclusion of out-of-home data since 2020. The pregame show, WNBA Countdown, averaged 508,000 viewers per telecast.
With assistance from Molly Geary.
(This article has been updated with a comment from a Sun spokesperson.)
