Oct 20, 2024; Brooklyn, New York, USA; New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu (20) celebrates after defeating the Minnesota Lynx in overtime to win the 2024 WNBA Finals at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images The New York Liberty’s title-clinching victory over the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday was the most watched WNBA Finals game since 1999.
The Game 5 thriller, won by the Liberty 67-62 in overtime, had a 1.1 rating with 2.15 million viewers on ESPN. The previous high was the deciding Game 3 of the 1999 WNBA Finals between the Houston Comets and Liberty that had 3.25 million viewers.
It was the fourth largest audience ever for a WNBA Finals game, with the other three all broadcast on NBC.
Before Sunday, the largest audience for a Game 5 of the NBA Finals was 913,000 viewers for a Los Angeles Sparks vs. Lynx winner-take-all game in 2017. The WNBA switched to a best-of-five Finals format in 2005 and will switch to a best-of-seven format next season.
Even as Sunday’s game decided the WNBA championship, it was just the seventh largest WNBA audience this season, counting the WNBA Draft.
The six games this season with a bigger audience all involved rookie sensation Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever. That list includes four Fever games, the draft and the WNBA All-Star Game.
Clark has drawn a wider audience to the WNBA, with the league reaching at least 1 million viewers for 32 broadcasts this year, including the draft. The previous record was 15 broadcasts in 1998. Of the 31 games with at least 1 million viewers, 24 of them involved the Fever and Clark.
–Field Level Media
