{"id":196637,"date":"2025-10-08T04:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T04:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196637\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T04:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T04:23:08","slug":"wnba-finals-draw-most-viewers-for-a-game-1-since-the-leagues-inaugural-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196637\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Finals draw most viewers for a Game 1 since the league&#8217;s inaugural season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 The opening game of the WNBA Finals was the most watched Game 1 since the league&#8217;s inaugural season.<\/p>\n<p>An average of 1.9 million viewers watched <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/wbna-finals-mercury-aces-score-704428e5d5a6d6e56e7be5bcf8a9d831\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Las Vegas edge Phoenix 89-86;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Las Vegas edge Phoenix 89-86<\/a> on Friday night, according to ESPN. That was up 62% from last season&#8217;s matchup of New York and Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The game peaked with 2.5 million viewers.<\/p>\n<p>Only the 1997 championship, which was a winner-take-all Game 1 had more people watching.<\/p>\n<p>Game 2 ratings weren&#8217;t yet available.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP WNBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 The opening game of the WNBA Finals was the most watched Game 1 since&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,52576,82,630,15457],"class_list":{"0":"post-196637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-inaugural-season","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wnba","13":"tag-wnba-finals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}