The Liberty and Aces WNBA Finals elevates the leagues brand
When the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces formed what have been characterized as super teams by close followers of the WNBA, featuring this season’s league MVP, Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, who has won the award twice, and Aces forward A’ja Wilson, also a two-time MVP (2020, 2022), as well as back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year (2022, 2023), it was almost a foregone conclusion the two franchises would meet in the Finals.
The Aces finished the regular season with the best record at 34-6 and the Liberty with the second best mark at 32-8. The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds played Game 4 of the best-of-five Finals last night (Wednesday) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn with the Liberty trying to push the series to a decisive Game 5 back in Las Vegas tomorrow. The Aces led 2-1 and were looking to claim their second consecutive title with a win.
No matter what the outcome, the Finals have already been a victory for women’s basketball. Heading into last night’s match up, the series has generated impressive television ratings. Game 1 on Sunday, October 8, held at the Michelob ULTRA Arena in Las Vegas, had an average viewership of 729,000 and peaked at 885,000 people watching on ABC.
Game 3 at the Barclays Center this past Sunday set a league attendance record as 17,143 tickets were collected—the most ever for a WNBA contest. Heading into last night’s meeting between the two magnetic teams, the 673,000 average viewers for Games 1, 2 and 3, broadcast on ABC and ESPN and streamed on Youtube TV, made this year’s Finals the highest rated through the first three games in the league’s history dating back to its inaugural 1997 season.
Additionally, Game 3 had an average viewership of 659,000, peaking at 945,000. It was the most watched WNBA Game 3 in 18 years and a 14% increase from last season’s Game 3 played by the Aces and Seattle Storm.
Game 4, aired on ESPN, was expected to continue the trend as the Liberty were facing elimination. They showed urgency and resilience in defeating the Aces 87-73 in Game 3 after getting steamrolled in Game 1 (99-82) and Game 2 (104-76). The outcomes in head-to-head competition between the Liberty and Aces this season have been counterintuitive.
Going into last night, the supremely talented squads had played only one game in seven against each other that ended in a single digit win—a 94-85 Liberty victory on August 28 in Brooklyn. The average point differential in the Liberty’s and Aces four regular season games was 19—ironically, the exact same number through Game 3 of the Finals.
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