The WNBA Finals set another viewership mark in Game 3.
Wednesday’s Valkyries-Dream WNBA Finals Game 3 averaged 1.71 million viewers, combining a Nielsen-measured linear audience on USA Network and CNBC with an Adobe Analytics-measured streaming audience on Peacock — marking the largest audience for Game 3 of the Finals since the winner-take-all Liberty-Comets on NBC in 1999 (3.25M).
It also ranks as the third-most watched WNBA Finals game ever on cable, behind the winner-take-all Lynx-Liberty Game 5 on ESPN in 2024 (2.15M) and last year’s Mercury-Aces Game 1 (1.86M). Across all networks, it delivered the ninth-largest Finals audience in the history of the event, with two of the series’ first three games ranking in the top ten.
(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.)
Atlanta’s blowout win increased 31% from last year’s Aces-Mercury Game 3 on ESPN (1.30M).
Game 3 was the first of the WNBA Finals that did not face football competition. Game 1 aired on a college football Saturday and Game 2 opposite NFL “Monday Night Football.” Game 3 was originally scheduled to air opposite NFL “Thursday Night Football,” but was moved up a day to ensure the Dream could play at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, which was occupied Thursday by a Sombr concert.
The Sombr shuffle put Game 3 in competition with the first full night of the NBA season. ESPN’s competing Timberwolves-Heat game averaged 2.52 million.
Game 3 was the 12th-straight WNBA Finals game to average a seven-figure audience (2024-present), after the previous 80 had failed to hit the million viewer mark (2003-23). More Finals games have topped the million mark in the past three seasons than in all prior seasons combined (10). (Part of that is owed to the short length of the WNBA Finals in the league’s early days; series were best-of-three until 2005).
To put the numbers in perspective, Atlanta’s previous WNBA Finals Game 3 — a sweep-clinching loss to Minnesota in 2013 — averaged 321,000 viewers.
