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.
