With an “8/23” shadow looming, Indiana Fever’s game against Chicago Sky was always going to be intense, but few could have predicted it to be historic. Though now eliminated, Sky arrived to keep their playoff dreams alive. With them, a historic record-breaking 3 million+ audience also tuned into the fixture.

“A total audience delivery of 3.31 million viewers tuned in to watch Clark scored 37 points in the Fever’s 113-90 win, according to NBC Sports,” wrote Bleacher Report’s Julia Stumbaugh on August 25. “That marked the WNBA regular season’s most-watched game since 1997 and the third most-watched game of all time, according to the network.”

Since the league’s top two viewed games in 1997, no game had been able to even reach the 3 million mark. A May 2000 game between the Houston Comets and New York Liberty sat third till this week with 2.74 million viewers.

The Bleacher Report piece also noted how the record stood for a good quarter century, until nearly three decades later, the WNBA finally saw a regular-season audience this massive again.

The Fever-Sky game drew 3.31 million viewers, making it the league’s most-watched regular-season game since its inaugural weekend. Fever and Sky crossed the 3.30 million mark on August 23, a date DiJonai Carrington would be all too familiar with.

After Carrington’s foul was upgraded on August 8 to a flagrant 2, leading to her ejection, the debate around the matter had intensified. Carrington’s social media activity in the coming hours had many wondering whether the matter was racial in nature, with Sophie Cunningham being hit.

Soon after the ejection, Carrington’s social media activity tagged Indiana Fever, bringing the spotlight to the incident, forcing many to wonder what the implication here was.

Later, Carrington herself clarified that her ‘white privilege’ comment was not to take a shot at the assessment of the foul, but the conversation spark had been lit. What built the suspense up even further for this record-breaking game was Carrington’s other social media post.

In the true spirit of any sportsperson, Carrington simply posted “8/23” on X, hinting at the rematch and how the goal would now be to let the ball do the talking.

This was exactly why, going into the game, excitement was at an all-time high. For Fever fans, showing up to Clark’s games in-person has also been a big and welcome change of pace. Before Clark was drafted first overall in 2024, their average attendance was just about four thousand fans a game.

Then, after 2024, suddenly the attendance numbers skyrocketed to over 15 thousand fans attending each game on average. This recent change also explains perhaps why neither of the teams was playing when the WNBA received record viewership twice back in 1997.

Though history wasn’t the best indicator of these numbers, the Sky’s playoff situation going into the game would also explain why their fans tuned in.

Though Fever had already made it to the playoffs, Sky would still be mathematically in the race, making this a must-win game.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Caitlyn Clark’s Fever had other plans, as the night turned out to be disappointing, with the “8/23” comment making an unfortunate return to mock matters.

How “8/23” came back to haunt the Chicago Sky

On August 8, the Chicago Sky lost a close game, separating both team’s simply by just 4 points. Thanks to a dominant 31 point second-quarter, the Fever saw out the game 90-86. However, August 23 did not play out the same.

In an ironic twist, the Sky lost the game by not 4 but exactly 23 points. To make matters worse, Caitlin Clark’s career-high 8-for-12 three-pointers stood out to combine into an 8/23 figure Chicago fans would hate to see.

Though Indiana played the game on the road, they held on to their ever-so-slight edge at halftime. At the end of the first half, it was anybody’s game with a 51-to-50 score, but all that changed in the final two quarters.

Compared to Clark’s 37 points, Carrington only managed seven points through the evening. What made things worse was the fact that Carrington even missed all three of their three pointer attempts.

Carrington’s frustration was perhaps visible as at one point, she tried to bump shoulders with Clark, but the latter played it cool, not acknowledging the interaction in the moment.