The WNBA delivered one of its five largest audiences on record for Saturday’s All-Star Game.
Saturday’s WNBA All-Star Game from Chicago averaged a 1.6 rating and 3.16 million viewers on ABC, marking the fifth-largest audience of any kind in league history, behind only the 2024 All-Star Game, the winner-take-all Game 3 of the 1999 WNBA Finals, and two games on the league’s inaugural weekend of play in 1997.
Viewership increased 44% from last year’s All-Star Game, which Fever G Caitlin Clark missed due to injury (2.19M), but fell short of the record 3.44 million for the aforementioned 2024 All-Star Game, which featured Clark and a WNBA vs. Team USA format. The past three years rank as easily the most-watched in the history of the All-Star Game, comfortably surpassing the longstanding high of 1.44 million in 2003.
As recently as three years ago, the All-Star Game had just 850,000 viewers in the same primetime ABC window — and that was still a 16-year high at the time. Four years ago, when it was previously held in Chicago, it had 734,000 in an afternoon window on ABC. Five years ago, the game had just 470,000 on ESPN.
Compared to other All-Star games, only the NBA and MLB editions drew more viewers over the past year — both averaging 8.79 million. For the first time, the WNBA All-Star Game outdrew its NFL equivalent, as the “Pro Bowl Games” averaged 2.0 million in a Tuesday night window on ESPN in February.
Among all All-Star events, the WNBA game ranked fifth behind the MLB and NBA games, NBA All-Star Saturday Night (5.36M) and the MLB Home Run Derby (5.29M).
Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew historical comparisons, though it is unlikely many past WNBA games would rank higher all things being equal.
