The WNBA Finals scored its largest audience in more than two decades as over a million viewers watched Minnesota’s Game 1 comeback against New York.
Thursday’s Lynx-Liberty WNBA Finals Game 1 averaged a 0.6 rating and 1.14 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest WNBA Finals audience since Game 2 of the 2003 series on ABC (Sparks-Shock: 1.28M), the largest Game 1 audience in Finals history and the tenth-largest audience in the history of the event.
The previous high for a Finals opener was 1.07 million for Game 1 of the Mercury-Comets 1998 series on ESPN and Lifetime. (If one wants to get technical, the single-elimination 1997 final would still rank as the top “Game 1” with 2.85 million on NBC.) The 1998 series would likely still come out ahead all things being equal, as Nielsen did not track out-of-home viewing prior to 2020.
It was just five years ago that Game 1 of the Sun-Mystics WNBA Finals averaged 238,000 viewers on ESPN, the smallest audience for any game in Finals history. Viewership has increased for each subsequent Game 1, rising to 351,000 for Aces-Storm in the 2020 “bubble,” 469,000 for Sky-Mercury in 2021, 555,000 for Sun-Aces in 2022 and 729,000 for Liberty-Aces last season.
WNBA Finals Game 1 viewership, past 10 seasons
Minnesota’s comeback overtime win was the 27th WNBA telecast this season to hit the million-viewer mark, extending the record for a single season. (Prior to this year, the most seven-figure audiences in a single season was 15 in 1998.) Of those 27, it was only the third that did not either feature or directly follow Caitlin Clark and the Fever.
Over a 20-year stretch from 2004 through 2023, the most-watched WNBA Finals game was the deciding Game 5 of the 2017 Sparks-Lynx series, which averaged 913,000. (It should be noted that game predated the Nielsen out-of-home era, and would likely have topped the million-viewer mark had such figures been counted at the time.)
Game 1 aired directly opposite NFL Thursday Night Football and the Major League Baseball Postseason, which is actually lighter competition than usual. The Finals typically opens on a Sunday afternoon opposite the most-watched NFL windows.
(Nielsen estimates via Programming Insider 10.11)
