The WNBA’s 2024 season seems to have reverberated around the country—and not just because of New York Liberty mascot Ellie’s signature stomp.
Sunday’s Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, which saw the Liberty secure its first championship in franchise history after an overtime battle with four-time champs the Minnesota Lynx, brought in 2.15 million viewers on ESPN, plus record crowds at both Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Minneapolis’s Target Center made it the most-attended WNBA Finals in history.
The record viewership follows a season defined in part by the repeated viewership and attendance records that were set and broken, along with a round of new sponsors, including Bumble and Delta Air Lines. Before basketball fans transition into watching the NBA, the WNBA’s brother league that some might be familiar with, here’s a look at some of the standout stats from the W in 2024.
Not-so-regular season
The season tipped off in May with much fanfare in the wake of a record-breaking Women’s NCAA Tournament, which was quickly followed by the draft viewed by 2.4 million people, a 307% increase from last year.
- Much of the hype at the start of the season surrounded powerhouse rookies like Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese, and Indiana Fever guard and Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark.
- In the first week of the season, the W said four out of the five moments that drove the most engagement on its social channels at that point featured highlights of rookies including Clark, Reese, Los Angeles Sparks forward Cameron Brink, and Las Vegas Aces guard Kate Martin.
The regular season wrapped in September as the W’s most-watched in 24 years, with the highest game attendance in 22 years, according to the league:
- Across ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, Ion, and NBA TV, more than 54 million unique viewers tuned into regular-season games.
- Of those games, 22 of them averaged at least 1 million viewers, another record.
- It was the most-viewed regular season on ESPN platforms including ABC and ESPN2, averaging about 1.2 million viewers, up 170% from the 2023 season.
- CBS Sports averaged 1.1 million viewers, up 86% year over year for the network’s most-watched regular season.
- Ion saw an average of 670,000 viewers, an increase of 133% from last year.
- Total attendance was 2,353,735, a 48% YoY increase.
Crunch time
The viewership trend continued into the playoffs, the league’s most-watched in 25 years across all networks, according to Nielsen data shared by ESPN.
- The 17 playoff games leading up to the finals saw an average of 970,000 viewers, up 142% from the 2023 season.
- This year marked the most-viewed WNBA playoffs on ESPN networks since the league’s inaugural season in 1997.
- The nine semifinal games averaged 850,000 viewers on ESPN networks, up 99% compared to ESPN’s semifinals average last year.
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Everyone watches: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the finals—which ran all five possible games as the Liberty and the Lynx battled it out in close contests that included two overtime games—also ushered in new viewership and attendance records.
Game 1 brought 17,732 fans out to Barclays Center and averaged 1.1 million viewers with a peak of 1.5 million, making it the most-watched Game 1 in WNBA Finals history. Game 2 saw 18,040 fans at Barclays (then a Liberty attendance record) and an average of 1.34 million viewers. At the time, it was the most-watched WNBA Finals game in 23 years and the second-most viewed across ESPN networks.
The series shifted to Target Center for Game 3, when the Lynx set an attendance record of their own with 19,521 fans. That then became the most-watched WNBA Finals game in 23 years across networks and the most-viewed of all time across ESPN networks, peaking at 2 million viewers. Friday’s Game 4 surpassed that record, reaching a peak of 2.4 million viewers to become the most-viewed WNBA Finals game of all time on cable.
By Game 5, which set another attendance record for the Liberty (18,090), average attendance for the series reached 18,518, a new record for the WNBA Finals and a major milestone for both teams, including the Liberty, which not long ago were playing in front of just a couple thousand people in Westchester County before they rebranded and relocated to Brooklyn. The 2.15 million ESPN viewers marked yet another record, making Game 5 the most-watched WNBA Finals game in a quarter century. Across all five games, viewership was up 115% versus last year's finals.
Brand together
Between those viewership and attendance figures and the two overtime games, WNBA sponsors and advertisers are likely feeling like champs, too. (A recent report from measurement company EDO indicated the performance of basketball games for advertisers this year.)
League and Liberty sponsor CarMax, for one, has wormed its way into some viewers’ brains. Through the playoffs, several X users tweeted about one of the brand’s ads, which refers to Aces center A’ja Wilson as a two-time MVP. After Wilson won the award for the third time, fans called for an edit, and CarMax obliged, running the ad so frequently through the postseason that a couple of fans re-created it, catching the attention of Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, who also appears in the ad.