The WNBA has kicked off its semifinals following the highest-ever viewership for the opening round of the playoffs. The first round averaged 1.30 million viewers across ESPN/ABC, Prime Video, and USA Sports, marking a 37% increase from last year’s average of 944,000 and surpassing the previous record of 1.11 million set in 2024. This year’s first round featured Caitlin Clark, who returned after missing last year’s playoffs due to injury.
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The most-watched game of the opening round was the winner-take-all Game 3 between Clark's Fever and the Aces, which pulled in an average of 2.25 million viewers on USA Network and CNBC. Another opening round Game 3, the Wings-Valkyries contest on ESPN2, averaged 1.2 million viewers, up 28% from last year’s Mercury-Liberty game.
As the semifinals began, Sunday’s Game 1 between the Liberty and Dream averaged 1.2 million on ABC, a 14% decrease from last year’s Fever-Aces matchup, which garnered 1.4 million viewers. Meanwhile, the Aces-Valkyries Game 1 attracted a combined audience of 1.12 million across NBC, with 1.01 million from linear television and 111,000 from streaming, reflecting a significant 57% increase from last year’s Mercury-Lynx game.
These two semifinal games represent the second and third most-watched Game 1 of a semifinal series since 2016, trailing only last year’s Fever-Aces game. Notably, this year’s opener and one each in 2024 and 2025 are among the few semifinal games to air on broadcast television, all scheduled opposite NFL games.
In terms of overall rankings, these games stand as the seventh and eighth most-watched semifinal games since 2002, following last year’s six highly viewed matchups. Despite Nielsen methodology shifts, the substantial rise in viewership over recent years suggests that such changes are unlikely to alter the overall trends. Just three years prior, the semifinals opened with 394,000 viewers for the Sun-Liberty game and 182,000 for Wings-Aces.