The good times keep rolling for the ‘W,’ with Game 2 of the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty WNBA Finals breaking a decades-old viewership record.
Sunday’s Game 2 on ABC averaged 1.35 million viewers, up a whopping 93% versus the average of last year’s WNBA Finals games on ABC, and the largest audience of any WNBA Finals game since NBC’s broadcast of Game 2 of the Charlotte Sting-Los Angeles Sparks series in 2001, which drew 1.51 million viewers. Before Sunday’s game, the closest WNBA Finals audience to that 2001 number was Game 2 of the 2003 Los Angeles Sparks-Detroit Shock series that averaged 1.28 million viewers on ABC.
As at this point goes without saying, the WNBA is having its best viewership season in decades. Lynx-Liberty Game 2 drew the second-largest WNBA audience ever for an NFL Sunday, trailing only Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever against the Connecticut Sun in Game 1 of that playoff series earlier this year. The game also ranks as the eighth most-watched WNBA Finals game in history, and the only game since 2003 that cracks the top ten.
Through two games, the WNBA Finals are up 82% versus last year’s series between the Liberty and Las Vegas Aces.
The series is tied 1-1, and Games 3 and 4 are slated for Wednesday and Friday respectively, avoiding direct NFL competition. Should the series reach a deciding Game 5, it will be played on Sunday at 8 p.m. directly head-to-head with Sunday Night Football. However, recent history would suggest that that may not be as big of a deal as we once thought.
[Data courtesy of Sports Media Watch and ESPN PR]