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One of the biggest questions entering the 2025 WNBA season was whether the league could continue its ratings momentum following a historic 2024 campaign. The 2025 season showed its staying power, and the Finals were the cherry on top.
The 2025 WNBA Finals between the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury averaged 1.5 million viewers across four games, the second-most-watched Finals series on ESPN (behind 1.6 million from last year) since the network took exclusive rights to the WNBA postseason in 2003.
It’s worth noting that the numbers are based on Nielsen data, which changed its methodology to the Big Data + Panel model earlier this year. This change, on top of the addition of out-of-home viewership added in 2020, has boosted viewership numbers across all sports.
The series saw the Aces sweep the Mercury, essentially nullifying the league’s first best-of-seven playoff series, as there have been at least four games in the WNBA Finals in each of the last five years. The lopsided series clearly cut into the series viewership, considering that last year’s do-or-die Game 5 between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx drew 2.15 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA Finals game of the 2000s.
However, the Nielsen metric changes and dip compared to last year aren’t enough to deny the league of its success. The 2025 Finals numbers are still twice as much as the 728,000 average in 2023, when the Aces beat the Liberty in four games. The full postseason also averaged 1.2 million viewers, up 5% compared to last year—despite the absence of Caitlin Clark.
The game-by-game viewership breakdown of the 2025 Finals:
- Game 1 (ESPN): 1.9 million
- Game 2 (ABC): 1.2 million
- Game 3 (ESPN): 1.3 million
- Game 4 (ESPN): 1.4 million
Despite the success, the WNBA now enters one of the most consequential offseasons in history. The league and its players’ union have until Oct. 31 to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement—or an extension of the deadline—to avoid a work stoppage.
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