Game 5 of the WNBA Finals on Sunday was a huge viewership with the highest rating of the championship series since it aired on NBC in the 1990s.
ESPN announced Tuesday that 2.2 million viewers tuned in on average Sunday night, with viewership peaking at 3.3 million for the winner-take-all game between the New York Liberty and the Minnesota Lynx. New York won in overtime to claim the franchise’s first championship.
According to ESPN, that represents a 142% viewership increase over last season’s Game 4 clincher between the Las Vegas Aces and Liberty. By reception sportsIt is the most-watched WNBA Finals game since the decisive Game 3 in 1999 between the Liberty and Houston Comets that aired on NBC and drew 3.25 million viewers.
Game 1 of the Lynx-Liberty series drew 1.14 million viewers and ratings rose steadily with each game until Sunday’s Game 5. According to FOS, the ratings eclipse those of the 2023 WNBA Finalswhich were previously the most viewed in decades. None of the 2023 Finals games drew 1 million viewers, with average viewership peaking in the decisive Game 4 at 889,000.
How will the increase in qualifications affect collective bargaining negotiations?
The Finals ratings cap a year of explosive growth for the WNBA fueled in part by the phenomenon Caitlin Clark. The Indiana Fever rookie who became a sensation in college at Iowa sparked unprecedented interest in the league and contributed significantly to its growth this season.
Indiana’s Game 2 first-round playoff matchup against the Connecticut Sun in September drew an average of 2.54 million viewers and peaked at 3.5 million. It marked the largest audience ever for a WNBA game on cable.
But the ratings from the playoffs to the Finals continued to demonstrate that the league’s growth is not strictly dependent on Clark. Clark’s Fever hasn’t played since being eliminated in Game 2 by the Sun, and spectators continued to show up in large numbers until the end of the postseason.
Rising interest and the money that interest generates has contributed to a changing financial atmosphere that led the WNBPA to opt out of its collective bargaining agreement with the league on Monday. The WNBA recently announced expansion franchises in Portland, Toronto and California’s Bay Area and signed a new media rights deal worth approximately $200 million a year, an increase from his previous deal valued at approximately $60 million per season.
The WNBPA will surely point to the league’s increased ratings in the postseason as it makes its case in negotiations for a bigger slice of the pie.