WNBA Semifinals Open With 1.15M Viewers, Up 10%
NBC aired its first WNBA playoff game in more than two decades.
The WNBA semifinals kicked off with an impressive 1.15 million average viewers for its first two games on Sunday, marking a 10% increase compared to the opening games of last year's semifinals. Both matchups took place against the NFL's Week 4 Sunday schedule. The Dream and Liberty faced off on ABC, drawing 1.17 million viewers at 2 p.m. ET, while the Aces and Valkyries on NBC and Peacock garnered 1.12 million viewers at 4 p.m. ET.
This was the first WNBA playoff game on NBC since 2002, following the league's new media rights deal worth over $3 billion. The WNBA semis averaged 1.15 million viewers across the two games, up from 1.4 million in the same slot last year, when the Aces played the Fever on ABC. Last year, ESPN held the rights to all WNBA playoff games, with the two semifinal Game 1s averaging around 1.05 million viewers.
The Aces and Fever game, which started at 3 p.m. ET, was up against an NFL Sunday lineup and delivered the highest viewership of any WNBA semis opener this year. This year's semis saw higher ratings than last year's semis, with the Lynx and Mercury game at 5 p.m. ET drawing 716,000 viewers on ESPN, despite airing on a cable network.
The WNBA's first-round games set a new record, averaging 1.3 million viewers across 10 games on ESPN, Prime Video, and USA Network, a 37% jump from last year.
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