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Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Aces and Mercury clocked the league’s best opening viewership for the championship series since its inaugural 1997 season.
The Aces’ three-point win in Las Vegas drew 1.9 million average viewers on ESPN, up 62% from last year, the league said Tuesday night.
The game peaked at 2.5 million viewers. WNBA Countdown leading into the game averaged 626,000 viewers, up 78% from last year. The playoffs are averaging 1.2 million viewers, up 16% from last year.
The 1997 championship was a single-game format and drew 2.8 million viewers on NBC.
Friday night’s game drew one of the league’s largest Finals audiences since those early days of the WNBA. Only last year’s overtime Game 5 thriller, which averaged 2.2 million viewers, had a larger audience for a Finals game since 2000.
It’s important to note when comparing viewership data year-over-year the recent changes to Nielsen’s audience measurements. Last month, Nielsen unveiled a new methodology that includes set-top boxes and smart TVs in its totals. The new system has led to higher ratings across the sports industry, especially in college football and the NFL.
Still, these numbers are a clear win for the league. Perennial TV draw Caitlin Clark barely played this season, and the teams from last year’s contentious Finals were eliminated in the first two rounds.
The WNBA Finals are also nestled in a busy part of the sports calendar, between college football and the NFL, MLB playoffs, and the start of the NBA and NHL seasons; Game 1 was played on a Friday night.
ESPN has not shared ratings for Sunday’s Game 2, a 91–78 Las Vegas win. The Aces head to Phoenix for Game 3 Wednesday night leading 2–0 in the expanded best-of-seven series.
Off the court, the biggest storyline in the WNBA is the impending deadline at the end of the month for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement. Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier poured gasoline on the fire last week by calling out commissioner Cathy Engelbert, saying the league has the “worst leadership in the world.” Engelbert denied making some of the comments described by Collier before Game 1 on Friday, which led the Lynx star and Unrivaled cofounder to cancel a meeting between the two women.
