The New York Liberty’s title-clinching victory over the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday was essentially the most watched WNBA Finals sport since 1999.
The Recreation 5 thriller, received by the Liberty 67-62 in additional time, had a 1.1 score with 2.15 million viewers on ESPN. The earlier excessive was the deciding Recreation 3 of the 1999 WNBA Finals between the Houston Comets and Liberty that had 3.25 million viewers.
It was the fourth largest viewers ever for a WNBA Finals sport, with the opposite three all broadcast on NBC.
Earlier than Sunday, the most important viewers for a Recreation 5 of the NBA Finals was 913,000 viewers for a Los Angeles Sparks vs. Lynx winner-take-all sport in 2017. The WNBA switched to a best-of-five Finals format in 2005 and can swap to a best-of-seven format subsequent season.
At the same time as Sunday’s sport determined the WNBA championship, it was simply the seventh largest WNBA viewers this season, counting the WNBA Draft.
The six video games this season with an even bigger viewers all concerned rookie sensation Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever. That record contains 4 Fever video games, the draft and the WNBA All-Star Recreation.
Clark has drawn a wider viewers to the WNBA, with the league reaching not less than 1 million viewers for 32 broadcasts this 12 months, together with the draft. The earlier document was 15 broadcasts in 1998. Of the 31 video games with not less than 1 million viewers, 24 of them concerned the Fever and Clark.
–Area Degree Media
