The WNBA is one of the few sports to see its television ratings increase during the pandemic. That trend carried through the playoffs and seemingly into this season as the league posted historic opening weekend ratings. The league’s doubleheader on ABC produced the second and third most-watched regular-season games on record.
Saturday’s Sky-Mystics WNBA regular-season game averaged 611,000 viewers and a 0.39 rating on ABC, tallying the WNBA’s largest regular-season television audience in nine years — since Lynx-Mercury on the opening weekend of the 2012 season, also on ABC (804K). Before this weekend, the high was 599,000 for a Wings-Mercury ABC game last summer.
The Chicago Sky is shaping up to be a big draw this season. They tout one of the game’s best players in hometown hero Candace Parker and they call one of the country’s biggest media markets home. Parker’s victorious 70-56 Sky-debut on Saturday is the most-watched WNBA game of any kind since the 2018 All-Star Game (709K) and rolled over every WNBA Finals game since Game 5 of the 2017 series (902K). Last year’s top Finals game, Seattle’s series clincher in game three against Las Vegas, averaged 570,000 viewers on ESPN.
Saturday’s package of games was the first time ABC had ever broadcasted a doubleheader on its network after carrying the league’s games since 2003.
The finale pitted last year’s finalists against each other in a battle between the Aces and the Storm as Las Vegas got revenge 96-80. The contest averaged a 0.39 rating and 598,000 on ABC — the league’s third-largest regular-season audience since 2012. The average of 605,000 for Saturday’s doubleheader surpassed last year’s opening weekend games by 25%.
The league has experimented with different playing formats over the past few years to boost its popularity. The innovations have included a revamped playoff format and The Commissioner’s Cup. This is an in-season competition that designates a portion of regular-season games in the first half of the season — 10 per team, 60 total — to count toward Cup standings. The Cup prize money totals $500,000.