As the pop culture phrase states, if you know you know, and WNBA media members and fans knew this season was unprecedented and record shattering. But just how record shattering was this year in comparison to others previously for the W?
Well for starters, the WNBA has never had this many games on television and streaming platforms, especially slotted national games. Over the course of the season, the WNBA had more coverage nationally than ever before with 149 total games running on either ION (43), NBA TV (40), ESPN platforms (25), Amazon Prime (21), CBS Network (12), or Paramount+/CBS (8).
For this W season, this was the first-time double-digit number of games exceeded one million viewers, something unheard of for the league previously. Leading the way was ION network’s coverage of Friday night double headers for the league. ION saw an increase in viewership by 133% from the 2023 season as they averaged 670,000 viewers with seven games exceeding one million viewers.
Out of these seven games, the majority featured the Indiana Fever and their rookie sensation Caitlin Clark. The highest viewed games this season for ION featured a national broadcast matchup on August 30 between the Fever and Chicago Sky and a local broadcast featuring the Minnesota Lynx and Dallas Wings. Both broadcasts drew an audience of 1.6 million and peaked at 1.92 million.
In addition, ION attracted 23.37 million viewers across the games they broadcasted and their wrap shows. The partnership between the WNBA and ION brought in new viewers for both the network and the league as the male audience (ages 25-54) grew by 181% this season. ION brought in the largest percentage of female audience compared to other networks broadcasting the WNBA, as 50% of their audience was female and ages 18-49 with 45% of their P2+ audience also being female.
ION and Scripps Sports’ partnership with the WNBA seems to have paid dividends as Scripps added 20 new advertisers this year, delivered more than 3.7 hours of WNBA content, and generated over 100+ million social media impressions through collaboration with players and teams from the league. This partnership has both parties excited about the future relationship between ION and the WNBA, as commissioner Cathy Engelbert explained, “Through this partnership we’ve been able to showcase great basketball with a broader audience, deepening the connection between the league, the players and our growing fanbase while delivering record-breaking viewership numbers.”
In addition to ION, ESPN recently reported an uptick in viewership as they averaged 1.2 million viewers for the 2024 regular season and a 170% increase in viewership from the 2023 regular season. In ESPN’s games that exceeded one million viewers, the Fever and Clark were featured in 10 out of the 12 games with the highest ratings for the season taking place between the Fever and Sky on June 23 resulting in 2.3 million viewers. Particularly, ESPN chose to feature the Fever, returning champions the Las Vegas Aces, and playoff contenders the New York Liberty more than eight times throughout the season.
Additionally, ESPN’s investment in WNBA Countdown also rose as the show saw a 113% increase from last season and averaged just over half a million viewers. Again, setting a new record, the 2024 WNBA All-Star game saw 3.44 million viewers watch the matchup between the all-stars led by Dallas Wings’ Arike Ogunbolwale (MVP) and Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark facing off against Team USA before they began their Olympic campaign that resulted in bringing home their 8th gold medal.
ESPN has the exclusive rights to the 2024 playoffs for the WNBA and there are more opportunities for more viewership records to be broken. Last year, the finals between the Aces and Liberty saw an average viewership of 728,000, making it the most watched WNBA final in 20 years and up 36% from 2022. Subsequently, game four was the most watched game of the series as the Aces defeated the Liberty to an average of 889,000 viewers with peak viewership reaching 1.3 million, an increase of 124% for game four from the previous year.
