WNBA Finals: Dream, Valkyries delivering on the promise of what a 7-game series offers
ATLANTA — The WNBA can finally use the best two words in sports: Game 7.
For the first time in the league’s 30-year history, the championship will be decided at the end of a full seven-game series when the No. 2 Golden State Valkyries and No. 4 Atlanta Dream take the Chase Center court on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, USA Network). The Valkyries and Dream are building anticipation, even when the basketball hasn’t been all that great for those who want to see the scorebug budge more than every few minutes.
It’s a gift the league will heartily embrace on the heels of yet another week of bungling its own product – and after a dud of a Finals in its first attempt at the format last season. In hindsight, expecting an extended series between the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury a year ago, when the league changed the format from best-of-five, was foolish. The Aces and WNBA can be quite the thorn in each other’s side. Las Vegas won its third title in four years with an uneventful sweep.
There is none of that here, proving the league’s brass correctly the game was ready for the big time.
Yet the WNBA remains mired in oddities, to put it kindly. That a potential elimination Game 6 tipped at 12:30 p.m. ET on a Thursday was proof enough. The playoff standings are based on the top eight, without regard to conferences. It wasn’t until four years ago that the league ditched the single-elimination first and second-round bracket that sent the top two teams directly to the semifinals. Even the Finals previously stood as a standalone game that later changed to best-of-three in 1998 and best-of-five in 2005.
Crowning a champion within five games didn’t set the league apart. It kept it away.
“This will give our fans a championship series that they are accustomed to seeing in other sports,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said when she announced the change ahead of Game 1 of the 2024 WNBA Finals.
The “real” professional sports all play seven-games series. The NBA began with it in 1947 when the Basketball Association of America governed the league. The NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals adopted it in 1939, having used it once prior in 1919 when it was the NHL versus the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the final. MLB started the format, initiating it in 1905 and remaining unchanged with the exception of three seasons from 1919-21.
Those years baseball expanded, not contracted, to best-of-nine. The reason was simple: gate receipts. You didn’t think WNBA brass did this simply for funsies, did you? More games is more money in every stakeholder’s pocket. There’s a lot of green to go around these days. Every game has been a sellout, no matter the tip time or change of schedule.
To expand to seven any earlier was a leap too far for the fledgling WNBA. It still flew commercial until 2024, making for long and grueling travel days. Even with charter flights, the length of the series coupled with five-hour cross-country flights is taking a toll.
It’s unlikely ESPN, the WNBA’s TV partner since 2003, was pushing for more in the 2010s. It hid the playoffs on deeper channels, leaning instead into more lucrative and enticing deals with the MLB playoffs, NFL’s “Monday Night Football,” college football and NBA. It would not be surprising if cornhole and laser tag usurped the WNBA in a past era.
As a measuring stick of low points, the 2014 Finals – featuring Diana Taurasi’s Mercury and Elena Della Donne’s Sky – averaged 659,000 viewers, up 91% from the prior year’s Lynx/Dream series (345,000) and 38% above the 2012 Fever/Lynx (477,000). And those were celebratory marks as the most-watched since at least 2006.
My how far the league has come. The 2025 Finals averaged 1.5 million despite the sweep, ranking as the second-most-watched W Finals on ESPN’s networks. A record 1.9 million tuned in for Game 1 of what was expected to be an even series amid talks of growing parity and two surprising contenders.
The broadcaster’s record is 2024, when 1.6 million on average tuned in for the series between New York and Minnesota that could have used the extended format. The Lynx stole Game 1, forced a Game 5, and took the Liberty to overtime before New York escaped to win its first championship in franchise history. As the series chugged along, the wisecracks rose that Engelbert would appear out of thin air midgame to announce an early format change on a whim. Everyone wanted the testy, tight series to burn another two games.
This now is what the league’s leaders envisioned then. The Dream and Valkyries answered each other the last two weeks. They split the two-game stretches in San Francisco and Atlanta, setting up a 1-1-1 best-of-three. Each held home court in championship-worthy environments that once held only in dreams.
They forced the 14th winner-take-all game in league Finals history. The home team has won 11 of those. Game by game, viewership numbers are rising. The Valkyries’ Game 5 win averaged 1.4 million, the second-most-watched Game 5 ever — significant since every other previous one was winner-take-all.
Time and again, the product proves it is worth a position on the major sports carousel. In a historic year that began with a revenue-sharing collective bargaining agreement, it will end with another watermark financial boon. A first-time WNBA champion will be crowned no matter the winner at the final buzzer of the first Game 7.
The league is finally stacking good history now.
Source: sports.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.