WNBA viewership is comfortably ahead of last year’s pace entering the final weeks of the regular season.
WNBA regular season games were averaging 756,000 viewers through Wednesday across NBCUniversal, ESPN/ABC, CBS, ION, USA Network and NBA TV, a figure that includes Adobe Analytics for NBC games — up 15% from last year. That is beyond the range one would typically attribute to Nielsen’s methodological changes of the past year, namely its shift to a new methodology that integrates “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.
Like the NBA, which this past regular season enjoyed a 35% increase in viewership, the WNBA has benefited from having fewer games on NBA TV dragging down the average — and more games on broadcast television than at any point in league history. Quite unlike the NBA, which scaled back its cable TV presence in its new deal, the WNBA has also had an increase in games on cable thanks to its agreement with USA Network.
The league generated one of its top audiences of the season last weekend, as Fever-Lynx averaged a 1.5 rating and 2.52 million viewers on ABC — the fourth-largest audience of the current season and fifth-largest including the recent All-Star Game (3.16M).
Minnesota’s win, which peaked with 3.1 million viewers, delivered the eighth-largest WNBA audience of any kind since 2000. Fever G Caitlin Clark has been involved in each of the top ten, including seven Fever games, two All-Star games, and the 2024 WNBA Draft in which she was picked first overall.
Largest WNBA audiences since 2000
Indiana’s previous game, against Portland two nights earlier, averaged a 0.7 and 1.085 million on ION — trailing only Valkyries-Fever in May (1.09M) as the network’s most-watched window of the season. Indiana’s win, which peaked with 1.31 million, delivered the largest audience for a late night game on ION since the Scripps-owned “netlet” began airing WNBA games in 2023.
ION had its most-watched doubleheader of the season with an average of 877,000. In addition to the Fever game, the network delivered its largest non-Fever audience this season with a 0.40 and 655,000 for its early window.
In other action, NBC averaged 1.2 million for Sparks-Fire last Sunday across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (0.7 rating, 1.16M viewers) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics. ESPN drew a 0.39 and 694,000 for Sun-Wings later in the night.
Last Saturday, CBS drew a 0.7 and 1.08 million for Chicago’s buzzer-beating win over the Aces and ABC a 0.54 and 921,000 for Liberty-Mercury.
In what would have to be a first, the WNBA accounted for nine of the top 22 sports audiences on all of television for the week ending last Sunday — easily more than any other league. That includes the above-mentioned games and a Dream-Wings matchup on USA Network July 29 that averaged a 0.4 and 721,000. Even the mere fact that the WNBA had nine nationally televised windows across six platforms in one week would have been hard to believe five years ago.
