No, 'Millions' Of People Did Not Watch X Stream Of Angel Reese's Debut

Fans accused the WNBA of racism because the league did not broadcast Angel Reese's Chicago Sky preseason debut on Friday. The league's streaming app offered subscribers a viewing of Caitlin Clark's debut with the Indiana Fever, instead.

Predictably, Black Twitter and several media publications want to prove that the WNBA made the wrong decision. They are trying to do so by citing dubious view counts on social media.

On Friday, a fan in attendance in Minneapolis live-streamed Reese's debut from his cellphone to X. The view count for the stream sits at 2.5 million, as of publication. 

Various media outlets – from Mediaite to the New York Post to (the often fake news site) Front Office Sports  – touted the "millions" of viewers who tuned in for the game. 

Here are a few headlines:

Not quite.

More than 200,000 "people" did not live-stream the game. Nor have millions of "viewers" since watched the game. 

View counts on X do not measure "people/viewers." The social media app measures "views" – well, sort of. 

See, any user who scrolls past a video registers as a "view." You count as a "view" if you scroll past a video on X's egregiously intrusive "For You" tab. 

You count as a "view" if you scroll past a video that someone you follow reposts (formerly known as a retweet). The stream of Reese's debut has racked up over 2,700 reposts, thanks to the many websites that highlighted the stream.

That's a lot of extra "views."  

Angel Reese is going viral after taking a stand for women's sports. She tweeted about protecting young female athletes. (Credit: Getty Images)

The people who compare X "views" to television "viewers" are misinformed. 

Television ratings are measured by Nielsen, which calculates the average viewership per minute of a broadcast.

For example, Nielsen reported that 18.7 million viewers watched the Iowa-South Carolina women's national championship game in April. That means an average of 18.7 million viewers watched per minute from start to finish. 

The overall total number of viewers was much, much higher. 

So, what can we take away from the X stream of Reese's debut? 

Honestly, nothing. 

"Views" on X mean little. That is why podcasters have a hard time monetizing their content on the app. Advertisers know the numbers creators report are not real.

Ultimately, there were quantitative reasons the league chose to stream Clark's debut over Reese's. 

Clark is the bigger star. The ratings for her games in college routinely topped games featuring Reece. Clark was the first pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. Reese was the seventh.

Caitlin Clark is more popular than Angel Reese. Deceptively calculated "views" on X do not prove otherwise.