NBC Claims Record Audience for Start of WNBA Finals

ATLANTA — The WNBA Finals set a viewership record in its first championship game on NBC in more than two decades.

The network announced Wednesday that Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Valkyries and the Dream drew 2.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel and Adobe Analytics.

Those numbers would make it the most-watched Game 1 ever, drawing 11% more than the previous record of 1.9 million (per Nielsen numbers only) for Game 1 of last year’s Finals between the Mercury and Aces, which aired on ESPN. This excludes 1997, the league’s inaugural season; the one-game championship series that drew 2.85 million viewers on NBC.

Saturday’s game, which tipped off at 3:30 p.m. ET, competed against the upset-heavy Week 7 college football slate.

The Game 1 viewership numbers would also make it one of the most-watched Finals games of the modern era, next to the 2.15 million viewers for the do-or-die Game 5 in 2024 between the Liberty and Lynx.

The 2024 Draft Class Bounce

The numbers indicate the WNBA’s continued growth since the arrival of Caitlin Clark and the 2024 WNBA draft class. That class also included Angel Reese, who is leading the Dream this year. In 2023, the WNBA Finals did not have a game that breached 900,000 viewers.

However, Clark and the Indiana Fever still deliver the strongest viewership for the league. Every WNBA partner reported a Fever game as their most-watched of the regular season, and Game 3 of their first-round series against the Aces delivered 2.1 million viewers on ABC, similar to the WNBA Finals opener.

The most-watched playoff game since the 2024 draft was Game 2 of the 2024 first-round series between the Fever and Sun, which drew 2.5 million viewers on ESPN.

Saturday’s Game 1 was the first game on NBC since 2002 as the network returned as a Finals broadcaster under the league’s new media-rights deal worth more than $3 billion. There are no numbers yet for Game 2, the first WNBA Finals game ever on USA Network.

USA Network will also broadcast Games 3, 5, 6, and 7 of the Finals, while NBC will air Game 4. All games are available for streaming on Peacock.

Under the media-rights agreement, the Finals will be divided between Disney’s ESPN networks (five), Amazon Prime Video (three), and NBC/USA Network (three) until 2037.

The WNBA Finals, which is tied 1–1, resumes Wednesday with Game 3 shifting to Atlanta.

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