The WNBA Finals hit yet another new high on Friday, if likely to be surpassed by Sunday’s Game 5.
Friday’s Liberty-Lynx WNBA Finals Game 4 averaged a 0.9 rating and 1.67 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest WNBA Finals audience in 24 years — since Liberty-Comets Game 2 on NBC in 2000 (2.12M) — and sixth-largest overall. The Liberty have now played in nine of the 13 most-watched Finals games.
More games from this year’s Finals rank among the top ten than any other series, though it should be noted that the Finals was single elimination or best-of-three from 1997-04.
Largest WNBA Finals audiences
Minnesota’s series-tying win was also the most-watched Lynx game in franchise history, surpassing the previous high of 1.57 million for a regular season matchup against Caitlin Clark and the Fever back in July. The team’s most-watched game during the Maya Moore era was Game 5 of the 2017 Finals against the Sparks (913K).
Ratings increased 64% and viewership 88% from last year’s clinching Aces-Liberty Game 4, which until this year was the most-watched Game 4 of the Finals (0.52, 889K). (The Finals has used a best-of-five format since 2005.) As recently as five years ago, Game 4 of the Mystics-Sun WNBA Finals averaged 317,000 viewers on ESPN2. Just two years ago, the Aces’ clinching Game 4 win over the Sun averaged 396,000 on ESPN opposite the NFL.
Game 4 was the 31st WNBA telecast this season to top the million-viewer mark — 30th excluding the WNBA Draft — doubling the previous record for a single WNBA season, 15 in 1998. It was the sixth of those games that did not feature or follow Caitlin Clark and the Fever.
In what has been a milestone year for the WNBA, Game 4 ranks 13th in viewership behind 10 Fever games, the WNBA All-Star Game and WNBA Draft, all of which involved Clark in some form. It outdrew two of the four matchups between Clark and Angel Reese-led Chicago, the first on ESPN June 1 (1.53M) and the last on ION August 30 (1.60M).
Figures for Sunday’s winner-take-all Game 5, won by New York in overtime, will be available on Tuesday.
