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WNBA Finals Game 4 becomes most-watched on record – Sports Business Journal
Game 4 of the 2023 WNBA Finals between the Las Vegas Aces and N.Y. Liberty averaged 889,000 viewers, which is the most-watched WNBA Games 4 Finals on record, and up 124% from Game 4 in 2022. The Aces’ championship-clinching win peaked at 1.3 million viewers. The entire 2023 WNBA Finals Presented by YouTube TV on ESPN platforms had averaged 728,000 viewers, making it the most-watched WNBA Finals in 20 years, and up 36% from 2022. The 2023 WNBA Postseason on ESPN platforms also averaged 470,000 viewers, making it the most-watch postseason in 16 years (ESPN PR).
CLOSE BUT NOT CIGAR: In D.C., Candace Buckner wrote the WNBA and its network partners have “boasted about the rise in viewership,” but “don’t get blinded by the shine of celebrities or impressed by figures that have been cherry-picked to secure headlines.” Bucker: “Rather, I’m rooting — and waiting — for this 27-year-old league to grow up and truly have its moment.” She noted this is also “happening elsewhere in women’s sports.” A volleyball game in Nebraska draws 92,003 fans, and an exhibition basketball game in Iowa attracts 55,646, “nearly doubling the previous record.” The LSU-Iowa championship game “set the standard for women’s basketball ratings.” The W, even with its dream matchup pitting Aces F A’ja Wilson, and Gs Kelsey Plum and Chelsea Gray versus Liberty Fs Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones and G Sabrina Ionescu “hasn’t come close to those kind of ‘wow’ numbers.” The scheduling of the W’s glamour event during the football season — with “two of the four games airing right in the middle of NFL Sundays — has not helped the push for ratings.” For years, it has “been this way through the structure of the current media deal in which Finals games air exclusively on ESPN and ABC.” Because these networks do “not broadcast NFL games on Sundays, they’ve filled the void with the WNBA Finals.” But when the deal ends in 2025, the league “could do itself a favor by negotiating more control over when and where its Finals games are scheduled” (WASHINGTON POST, 10/19).
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