The WNBA continued its season of growth with a robust viewership number for the Finals between the Lynx and Liberty.
Game 5, which aired on ESPN and went to overtime, averaged 2.2 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA Finals in 25 years.
The number came against particularly stout competition, as the game went head-to-head with Steelers vs. Jets on NBC’s Sunday Night Football and Game 6 of the NLCS between the Mets and Dodgers on FS1.
As noted by Sports Media Watch, the all-time record viewership for a WNBA Finals game came when the Liberty played the Comets in a winner-take-all Game 3 in 1999 and 3.25 million people watched on NBC.
The five games of the 2024 Finals combined to average 1.57 million viewers, which was more than double last year’s total.
Three of the five WNBA Finals games went up against NFL competition, which is suboptimal considering the NFL is not only far and away the most popular programming in sports but on all of TV.
Nevertheless, this is a tough situation for the WNBA to avoid at the current time when ESPN is the sole rights holder of the Finals, as the network has wall-to-wall college football coverage on Saturdays.
It is a situation that should theoretically be slightly improved when NBC and Amazon enter the fold in 2026 as part of their entry into to the broader NBA rights package.
The WNBA experienced a boom this year with the arrival of Caitlin Clark, and the Finals viewership numbers are a sign that her high tide lifted other boats.
The numbers also show that she is a much more popular draw than the rest of the league, as the first-round playoff series between the Fever and Sun averaged more viewers than the WNBA Finals.
Game 1 of Fever-Sun averaged 1.8 million viewers on ABC, and Game 2 averaged 2.5 million viewers on ESPN2.