The WNBA hit another viewership record, although this one came on a night the league would rather forget.
Sunday’s Chicago Sky–Indiana Fever game drew 3.31 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel and digital data from Adobe Analytics, the network announced Wednesday. It’s the most-watched WNBA regular-season game since the league’s opening weekend in 1997, NBC said in a statement. Last year’s Finals averaged 1.5 million viewers over four games on ESPN networks.
NBC is broadcasting WNBA games this season for the first time since 2002 as a part of the league’s new media rights deal worth more than $3 billion.
The Fever won the game, 113–90, with Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell combining for 67 points. But Sunday’s game was notable for an incident that did not involve Clark.
Late in the third quarter, former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from Wintrust Arena after a verbal altercation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud. Freedom, who last played in the NBA in 2022, has been trolling the league for weeks and saying he wants to enter the 2027 draft as a woman..
The announcement comes a week after ESPN announced 2.6 million viewers for the Aug. 16 game between Fever–Atlanta Dream, the league’s most-watched regular-season WNBA game on cable.
Fever–Sky games have consistently driven the highest WNBA viewership since 2024, when Clark and Angel Reese entered the league. (Reese was traded to the Dream in April.)
League sources told Front Office Sports on Monday that Freedom, as well as former NBA player Royce White, who has also declared his intentions for the WNBA draft, are not eligible to play in the league based on its current eligibility rules.
On Tuesday, Sky owner Michael Alter told media on a conference call that security rightfully removed Freedom from the arena after he “turned himself into a threat” for standing up and taking a step towards Cloud. Chicago has placed an indefinite ban on Freedom for attending Sky home games.
But Freedom is not banned from attending other WNBA games as a fan, a league source told Front Office Sports.
