WNBA Finals Posts Best Game 1 Viewership Since 2000

Despite stiff competition from the NFL on Sunday, the WNBA Finals managed to get off to its best viewership start in 23 years. 

The Las Vegas Aces’ 99-82 victory over the New York Liberty in Game 1 was seen by 729,000 average viewers on ABC — the most for an opening game of the Finals since 2000 (872,000) when the Houston Comets beat the Liberty, per SportsMediaWatch. It was a 31% increase from the 2022 Finals’ Game 1 (555,000). 

Sunday’s game also represented the largest audience for the WNBA Finals on an NFL Sunday since 2003, when the Detroit Shock narrowly defeated the Los Angeles Sparks in Game 2 with 1.28 million viewers watching.

However, the presence of the NFL did mean that Game 1 of the 2023 Finals was not the most-watched WNBA game of the season; that honor still belongs to the Dallas Wings-Los Angeles Sparks regular season game on June 25 (733,000), as well as the WNBA All-Star Game, which attracted 850,000 viewers on ABC in primetime.

The WNBA Finals will have the opportunity to put up even better numbers on Wednesday night in Game 2 when it won’t have competition from the NFL and will go against the MLB Postseason, which has disappointed in viewership thus far.

The Aces-Liberty superteam matchup has been driving record ticket sales, with Game 3 in New York on pace to be the best-selling WNBA game in StubHub’s history.