FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup Achieves Record Viewership on TNT Sports

This year's tournament produced the five largest audiences in its history, with a notable United States-Italy group stage game attracting a 0.7 rating and 1.26 million viewers on Labor Day weekend.

Following closely, a U.S.-Czechia group stage game on Labor Day drew 1.2 million viewers, matched by the U.S.-France final last Sunday, which also recorded 1.2 million viewers. Additional top matches included the U.S.-Spain semifinal, viewed by 938,000, and the U.S.-China group stage game, which had 577,000 viewers. These games competed with college football, the NFL season kickoff, and the U.S. Open finals.

Previously, the highest-rated FIBA Women’s World Cup game was the 2022 final, which averaged 446,000 viewers on ESPN despite an early morning timeslot, aided by a college football lead-in.

The recent viewership numbers exceeded those of the most-watched WNBA games this season, which included a 1.14 million audience for the Fever-Valkyries game on USA Network and a 1.07 million audience for Fever-Wings on Prime Video. The WNBA's most recent major network game, Sky-Liberty on CBS, attracted 820,000 viewers, while the Fever game against the Sun on August 28 averaged 1.17 million on ION.

In contrast, TNT Sports' women’s basketball coverage previously peaked at 314,000 viewers for its finals.

For perspective, the highest audience from the 2023 men’s World Cup was 334,000 for a U.S.-Lithuania group stage game on ESPN2, while none of the matches from that tournament exceeded 200,000 viewers in the final.

Despite these achievements, viewership figures remain significantly lower than Olympic events, such as the 2024 United States-France women's basketball gold medal game, which had 7.8 million viewers on NBC.

This year’s Women’s Basketball World Cup was the inaugural major event under TNT Sports’ newly acquired rights deal with FIBA, established earlier this year.