A five-month Fever finally subsided Thursday, but not before generating one more milestone audience for the WNBA.
Thursday’s Fever-Aces first round WNBA playoff Game 3 averaged 2.25 million viewers on USA Network, per Nielsen panel-only data, marking the third-largest WNBA playoff audience on record outside of the WNBA Finals — trailing only Fever-Sun Game 2 on ESPN in the first round two years ago (2.54M) and Sparks-Comets Game 2 on NBC in the 1999 Western Conference Finals (2.62M).
The official Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” viewership figures will not be out until Monday. As a general rule, “Big Data + Panel” figures are higher than their panel-only equivalents, though that is not always the case.
The Aces’ win, which peaked with 2.7 million in the 11:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the fourth-largest WNBA audience ever on cable — trailing Fever-Dream on ESPN this past season (2.58M), the aforementioned Fever-Sun Game 2 in 2024, and Fever-Sky on ESPN earlier that same year (2.30M). That is despite airing opposite both NFL “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video and a winner-take-all MLB Postseason game on NBC (Phillies-Braves).
Outside of the Olympics, Game 3 was the most-watched sporting event on USA Sports this year.
By comparison, last year’s winner-take-all game between the Aces and Fever — a semifinal Game 5 that did not feature an injured Caitlin Clark — averaged 1.83 million on ESPN2. The Fever also played a winner-take-all Game 3 in the first round last season, with their win over Atlanta averaging 1.2 million on ESPN (also sans-Clark).
Game 2 of the series on Tuesday night averaged 1.42 million on Amazon Prime Video, the largest WNBA audience yet on the streamer, despite a 6:30 PM ET start time and overlap with a Red Sox-Yankees MLB playoff game. That is actually down from last year’s Fever-Dream Game 2 on ESPN, which did not feature the injured Clark (1.5M), but also did not face any MLB playoff competition.
Later in the night, Lynx-Liberty Game 2 averaged 1.06 million on USA Network, about even with Aces-Storm on ESPN last year (1.1M). Both Tuesday night games easily outpaced each of the three NHL Opening Night games airing in competing windows on ESPN.
In other action, Wednesday’s Valkyries-Wings Game 2 averaged 1.4 million on ESPN, preceded by Dream-Mystics at 1.2 million. Game 1 of Mystics-Dream drew 425,000 on Prime Video Sunday evening.
