Moved up to an earlier timeslot, Game 4 of the WNBA Finals fell short of the previous week’s series opener — but still delivered a viewership high.
Saturday’s Valkyries-Dream WNBA Finals Game 4 averaged 1.895 million viewers on NBC across a Nielsen-estimated linear audience (1.66M) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (232K), marking the largest audience for a Game 4 in the WNBA Finals. The previous high was 1.67 million for Liberty-Lynx on ESPN two years ago.
Golden State’s series-tying win — which peaked with 2.49 million in the 3:30 PM ET quarter-hour (2.125M per Nielsen) — increased 32% from last year’s clinching Aces-Mercury Game 4 on ESPN (1.44M). Outside of the past three years, no other Game 4 has averaged a seven-figure audience. Four years ago, the clinching Aces-Sun Game 4 had under 400,000 on ESPN (396K).
The WNBA Finals did not extend to a fourth game for the first time until 2005. From 1997-04, a period that included some of the most-watched Finals in league history, the title series was at most best-of-three.
Across all Finals games, Game 4 delivered the eighth-largest audience on record. This year’s series accounts for three of the top ten, with the previous week’s Game 1 ranking sixth (2.06M) and last Wednesday’s Game 3 on USA Network, CNBC and Peacock placing tenth (1.71M).
Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.
The Game 4 audience declined from Game 1 the previous week, which aired as scheduled in a later mid-afternoon timeslot. Game 4 was moved up to an earlier 1 PM ET start to accommodate the Dream playing in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, home of the NBA Hawks — who had a game scheduled for later in the night.
(Game 6 will also be played earlier than planned for the same reason, moving up to a 12:30 PM ET start Thursday. The Dream are not currently a tenant of State Farm Arena, which is why Hawks games were scheduled on nights reserved for the WNBA Finals.)
The earlier start put Game 4 in competition with the early afternoon college football games, including Indiana-Michigan on FOX (7.015M) and LSU-Auburn on ABC (3.48M), but that was actually lighter competition than the previous week — when Game 1 aired in a midday window opposite Alabama-Tennessee (8.10M) and Penn State-Michigan (4.50M).
Despite a 10 AM local time start, the Bay Area was the top rated market with a 4.0 rating for Game 4. Atlanta ranked second at a 2.8, followed by New Orleans (2.5), Oklahoma City (2.1) and Richmond, Va. (1.9).
NBC averaged 1.975 million viewers for its two WNBA Finals games (1.71M per Nielsen, 265K per Adobe) — up 20% from the equivalent games last year — and 1.72 million for its three-game playoff coverage (1.50M per Nielsen, 219K per Adobe).
