The WNBA Finals Game 5 has overwhelming ratings and adds excitement to the upcoming CBA talks

Game 5 of the WNBA Finals on Sunday drew overwhelming viewership and achieved the championship series’ highest ratings since it aired on NBC in the 1990s.

ESPN said Tuesday that an average of 2.2 million viewers tuned in Sunday night, with viewership peaking at 3.3 million for the winner-take-all matchup between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx. New York won in overtime to claim the franchise’s first championship.

According to ESPN, this represents a 142% increase in viewership over last season’s pivotal Game 4, which pitted the Las Vegas Aces against the Liberty. According to Front Office Sports, it is the highest-rated WNBA Finals game since the decisive Game 3 in 1999 between the Liberty and Houston Comets, which aired on NBC and drew 3.25 million viewers.

Game 1 of the Lynx-Liberty series drew 1.14 million viewers, and ratings steadily increased each game until Game 5 on Sunday. According to FOS, the ratings dwarf those of the 2023 WNBA Finals, which were previously the most-watched in decades. None of the 2023 finals drew 1 million viewers, with average viewership peaking at 889,000 in the deciding Game 4.

How will the rise in ratings impact the CBA talks?

The Finals ratings cap a year of explosive growth for the WNBA, fueled in part by the Caitlin Clark phenomenon. The Indiana Fever rookie, who became a sensation in college at Iowa, generated unprecedented interest in the league and contributed significantly to its growth this season.

Indiana’s first-round playoff game against the Connecticut Sun in September drew an average of 2.54 million viewers and peaked at 3.5 million. It was the largest ratings ever for a WNBA game on cable television.

But the playoff ratings leading up to the Finals continued to show that the league’s growth doesn’t depend entirely on Clark. Clark’s Fever have not played since their loss in Game 2 against the Sun and attendance continued to be high through the end of the postseason.

The rise in interest rates and the money that interest generates have contributed to a changing financial climate that led the WNBPA to pull out of its collective bargaining agreement with the league on Monday. The WNBA recently announced franchise expansion in Portland, Toronto and the Bay Area in California and signed a new media rights deal worth approximately $200 million per year, an increase from the previous deal worth approximately $60 million. dollars per season.

The WNBPA will certainly point to the league’s postseason ratings boost as it pushes for a larger share of the pie in negotiations.