Despite missing out on some of the biggest games, ESPN still managed to have its most-watched WNBA Playoffs.
ESPN averaged 1.4 million viewers for WNBA playoff coverage this season, up 23% from last year prior to the Finals (1.1M) and the company’s highest average on record at this point of the postseason. Unlike previous years, when all WNBA playoff games aired on the ESPN networks, coverage this year also aired on NBCUniversal, USA Network and Prime Video.
As a result, ESPN and ABC combined to air only eight of the 16 total first and second round games, as opposed to all 20 of the games played prior to the Finals last year. ESPN missed out on the most-watched game of the playoffs — Fever-Aces Game 3 in the first round, which drew 2.25 million on USA Sports — and one full series in the Valkyries-Aces semifinal. (The flip side is that ESPN also avoided carrying the lesser-watched playoff games, including fewer on NFL Sundays.)
Historical comparisons come with the now-standard caveats regarding changes in Nielsen methodology — the inclusion of out-of-home viewing, shift to “Big Data + Panel” and now enhanced tracking of co-viewing — but viewership is so much higher than in almost all past years that methodology is less likely to play a meaningful role.
The company’s highest rated and most-watched playoff game was Fever-Aces Game 1 in the first round, which averaged a 1.2 and 2.11 million on ABC. That was its only Fever game this postseason, after carrying eight last year (all without Caitlin Clark) and two in 2024.
The ESPN/ABC slate concluded with a 0.7 rating and 1.435 million viewers for Dream-Liberty Game 3 on ESPN2 a week ago Friday, down a tick in ratings but up 1% in viewership from Aces-Fever Game 3 last year (0.8, 1.43M). Game 3 delivered the third-largest audience of the playoffs, behind Games 1 and 3 of this year’s Aces-Fever series.
Game 2 had a 0.7 and 1.35 million. Along with Game 1 on ABC (0.6, 1.17M), all three games of the Dream-Liberty series rank among the ten most-watched semifinal contests since the best-of-five round was added to the playoffs in 2016. The four Nielsen rated games in this year’s semifinals — including Aces-Valkyries Game 1 on NBC (1.12M) — each rank in the top ten. (The other six occurred last year, including all five Aces-Fever games and one from the Mercury-Lynx series.)
No figures were reported for Games 2 or 3 of Valkyries-Aces, which aired on Peacock and NBCSN — figures for which are not generally publicized.
The semifinal round marked the conclusion of ESPN’s WNBA coverage this season, as NBCUniversal and USA Sports will share the WNBA Finals — marking the first time since 2000 that ESPN will not carry a Finals game.
As for the other networks, Prime Video averaged 943,000 for its two playoff games, topped by 1.42 million for Aces-Fever Game 2 in the first round. NBC averaged 1.12 million for the aforementioned Aces-Valkyries Game 1, its lone game in the first two rounds. An average for USA Sports’ three first round games was not immediately available, but as previously noted, it aired the most-watched game of the playoffs in Fever-Aces Game 3.
