WNBA viewership hits 26-year high in Year 1 of new TV deals

A media rights shakeup that now sees the WNBA airing across six different national television partners didn’t halt the league’s growth trajectory.

The WNBA hit a 26-year viewership high for the regular season, averaging 771,000 viewers per game, according to data compiled by Sports Business Journal. That’s up 17 percent versus the league’s regular-season viewership last season. Even when including first-time partner Peacock in the mix, the WNBA averaged 731,000 viewers, which is still the highest regular-season viewership the league has seen since 2000.

In total, 51 WNBA games reached an audience of over one million viewers this season, up from just 19 games last season.  Nine regular-season games topped the two-million-viewer threshold. It’s important to remember, prior to the 2024 season, which coincided with Caitlin Clark’s entrance into the league, a WNBA game had not surpassed one million viewers since 2008. Now, the league has eclipsed that mark over 50 times in a single season.

NBC was the partner that came out on top of the pack on a per-game average. The network averaged 1.75 million viewers across its seven-game slate in its first year airing the league under the new TV deals.

ABC was not far behind, averaging 1.56 million viewers per game across a 12-game schedule, up nine percent year-over-year. ESPN also saw a substantial jump from the 2025 season, averaging 1.24 million viewers across 17 games, up 32 percent year-over-year.

CBS, which more than doubled its WNBA package from nine games to 20 games this season, averaged 1.28 million viewers, up nine percent versus last year.

Ion, which airs regionalized WNBA doubleheaders each Friday throughout the season, averaged 617,000 viewers across its 34 game windows and was the only partner to see a year-over-year decline, ticking down by just two percent. The network, however, is still well outpacing its first year on the WNBA beat, when it averaged just 288,000 viewers per game during the 2023 season.

The WNBA’s most consistent partner, the Versant-owned USA Sports, averaged 525,000 viewers across 48 games in its first year airing the league. The weekly Wednesday doubleheaders, which aired across USA Network and CNBC, represented a 25 percent bump over the WNBA’s cable average for the 2025 season.

Lastly, Prime Video averaged 437,000 viewers per game across its 30-game streaming slate this season. The Amazon-owned platform has been a WNBA partner since 2021, but did not begin measuring its games via Nielsen until this season.

For all the off-court headlines the WNBA has generated this season, it’s undeniable that there is a large and growing audience interested in the actual games being played. No doubt, the league has added a ton of exposure across all three major distribution methods — broadcast, cable, and streaming — as part of its new media deals. But the added tonnage makes the per-game increases all the more impressive. The WNBA continues to quickly rise the ranks in terms of top viewership sports in the United States, and shows no signs of slowing down.