Another milestone audience for the WNBA Finals as Game 3 surpassed Game 2 to rank as the most-watched in 23 years.
Wednesday’s Liberty-Lynx WNBA Finals Game 3 averaged a 0.8 rating and 1.39 million viewers on ESPN, surpassing Sunday’s Game 2 on ABC (0.7, 1.35M) to rank as the most-watched WNBA Finals game since 2001 (Sting-Sparks Game 2: 1.51M) and the highest rated since 2003 (Sparks-Shock Game 2: 0.9).
New York’s last-second win was also the highest rated and most-watched Game 3 of the Finals since the winner-take-all Liberty-Comets in 1999 (2.3, 3.25M) and the most-watched Finals game ever on cable, surpassing the winner-take-all Mercury-Comets Game 3 in 1998 (1.37M). (The 1998 game almost certainly ranks higher all things being equal, as Nielsen did not include out-of-home viewing in its estimates prior to 2020.)
Overall, Game 3 posted the seventh-largest audience in Finals history, with the Liberty having played in five of those seven, seven of the top ten and eight of the top 12.
Most-watched WNBA Finals games, all-time
All three games of the WNBA Finals have averaged a seven-figure audience, making them the first Finals games to reach that threshold since 2003. Game 3 was the 30th total WNBA telecast to average at least one million viewers this season (29 excluding the WNBA Draft) and the fifth of those games that did not feature or follow Caitlin Clark and the Fever.
In what has been a milestone year for the WNBA, the most-watched Finals game in 23 years ranks merely 18th for the season — trailing 15 Fever games, the WNBA All-Star Game and WNBA Draft, all of which featured Clark in some form.
Compared to last year’s Aces-Liberty Game 3, which aired in a Sunday afternoon window on ABC, ratings increased 90% and viewership 112% from a 0.41 and 659,000. All three games of this year’s series have increased at least 50 percent over the equivalent game of Aces-Liberty last year, which was the most-watched WNBA Finals in 20 years at the time.
