WNBA All-Star ratings were still not much to brag about, but up is up.
Saturday’s WNBA All-Star Game earned a 0.5 rating and 709,000 viewers on ABC, up a tick in ratings and 17% in viewership from last year (0.4, 606K) but down a tick and 5% respectively from 2015, when the game aired on both ESPN and ABC (0.6, 746K). There was no game in 2016 due to the Olympics.
This year’s game ranks as the second most-watched since 2013 (791K).
The double-digit increase in viewership continues a season-long trend, with the regular season audience up a third across ESPN2 and NBA TV (to 114K).
Even so, the numbers are still middling historically. Of the 15 WNBA All-Star games all-time, Saturday’s audience ranks just ninth. Of the nine editions on ABC, it ranks seventh.
Compared to other All-Star games, the WNBA was no match for the “Big Four” major sports, as one would expect. The lowest of those was the NHL All-Star Game, which had a 1.2 and 2.0 million. It also trailed the NASCAR All-Star Race (1.5, 2.5M) and last year’s MLS All-Star Game, which had a combined 1.9 million across Univision and FS1.
Head-to-head, the WNBA did beat the competing Cubs-Cardinals Major League Baseball game, though that comes with the major caveat that it was a non-exclusive game on cable network FS1 (0.30, 463K).
[Numbers from ShowBuzz Daily 7.31]
