More ratings: WNBA, Racing, Hard Knocks and more

Sunday’s Wings-Mercury WNBA regular season game averaged a 0.43 rating and 599,000 viewers on ABC, marking the league’s largest regular season audience on any network since 2012. The previous high was 565,000 for a Sparks-Lynx game on ABC last season.

In the second half of ABC’s first-ever WNBA doubleheader, the network also averaged a 0.35 and 480,000 for Seattle-Connecticut. So far this season, six WNBA games have averaged at least 400,000 viewers (five on ABC and one on ESPN), more than all of last season (four, including the All-Star Game).

Despite a combined 15 games on ESPN or ABC this season — triple last season’s five — WNBA viewership across the ESPN family of networks is down 14% from last year to 211,000. While there have been more games on the primary ESPN networks, there have also been more on ESPN2 (14, up from last year’s full-season total of 11).

Indianapolis 500 qualifying on NBC averaged a 0.6 rating and 933,000 viewers Saturday and a 0.5 and 824,000 Sunday, both down from 2018 on ABC, the last time qualifying aired as scheduled (Saturday: 0.7, 1.05M; Sunday: 0.9, 1.33M). Compared to last year, when NBC did not air any live coverage due to rain, viewership increased 26% from 695,000.

In other racing action, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series road race averaged a 0.6 and 1.03 million on NBCSN — up 37% in ratings and 45% in viewership from last year’s second Daytona race, which aired over July 4 weekend (0.46, 707K).

The F1 Spanish Grand Prix averaged a 0.38 and 618,000 on ESPN Sunday morning, down 5% in ratings and 4% in viewership from last year (0.40, 645K). It was the first F1 race all season to decline.

Rounding out the racing action, NBC averaged a 0.37 and 517,000 for the season premiere of the Pro Motocross Championship series Sunday afternoon.

The latest edition of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” averaged just 251,000 viewers Tuesday night, down 8% from the previous week’s season premiere (273K) and down two-thirds from last year’s second episode (733K).

Prior to this year, the previous ten “Hard Knocks” premieres — dating back to 2017 — had topped 500,000 viewer mark.

Airing immediately following Tuesday’s Blazers-Lakers NBA playoff game, TNT’s Inside the NBA averaged 1.42 million viewers — up 12% from the first playoff edition last year (1.27M) and the network’s most-watched postgame show since the end of last year’s conference finals (3.51M). … On a night when three of Boston’s four major pro sports teams were in action, the Bruins came out ahead with an approximate 7.8 rating (6.2 on NESN + 1.6 on NBCSN), followed by the Celtics at a 6.6 (3.5 on NBC Sports Boston + 3.1 on ESPN), with the Red Sox a distant third (1.5 on NESN Plus prior to a rain delay), according to the Boston Globe. … Coverage of the Breeders Cup Challenge Alabama Stakes averaged a 0.52 rating and 785,000 on NBC Saturday evening, up from the previous week’s Travers Stakes on FOX (0.43, 605K).