Thanks to a milestone Game 1, WNBA Finals viewership remains at a 25-year high despite declines for Games 2 and 3.
The Aces-Mercury WNBA Finals was averaging 1.5 million viewers entering Friday’s potential Game 4 clincher, up 13% from last year and the highest average at this point of a Finals since the two-game Comets-Liberty on NBC and Lifetime in 2000 (1.54M).
Keep in mind that Nielsen did not begin tracking out-of-home viewing its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100% of markets until earlier this year. In addition, Nielsen in September began adding “Big Data” from set-top boxes and smart TVs to its preexisting panel.
Last week’s Game 1 audience of 1.9 million is primarily responsible for the 25-year high. Sunday’s Game 2 on ABC and Wednesday’s Game 3 on ESPN actually declined from last year, averaging 1.2 and 1.3 million respectively — down slightly from last year’s 1.3 and 1.4 million for Liberty-Lynx.
But those figures still far outpace what was once the norm for the WNBA Finals. Two years ago, Aces-Liberty delivered what was then the largest Game 3 audience in 18 years — 659,000 viewers.
Eight-straight WNBA Finals games have now topped the million viewer mark, the longest streak in the history of the event. Prior to 2024, only ten of 95 total Finals games had hit seven figures. (It should be noted that a handful of those would have hit the million mark under current Nielsen methodologies; Game 5 of the 2017 Finals had 913,000 without any out-of-home or “Big Data” viewership.)
WNBA playoff games are now averaging 1.2 million viewers, up 14% from the same point last year. While some of that can be attributed to Nielsen’s methodological changes, it is unlikely that would account for all of the gains.
Despite the WNBA expanding its Finals to best-of-seven for the first time this season, it is likely that the league will end up with fewer Finals games than a year ago. The Aces seemed poised Friday to complete a four-game sweep, and last year’s best-of-five Liberty-Lynx series went the distance.
