{"id":374412,"date":"2025-12-29T04:18:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T04:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/374412\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T04:18:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T04:18:32","slug":"wnba-finals-draw-most-game-1-viewers-since-inaugural-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/374412\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Finals draw most Game 1 viewers since inaugural season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS &#8212; 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\">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>Editor&#8217;s Picks<a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/46487023\/wnba-finals-game-2-mercury-aces-preview-live-updates-2025\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/r1556133_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The game peaked with 2.5 million viewers.<\/p>\n<p>Only the 1997 championship, which was a winner-take-all single game, had more people watching.<\/p>\n<p>Game 2 ratings weren&#8217;t yet available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS &#8212; The opening game of the WNBA Finals was the most watched Game 1 since the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-374412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374412","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=374412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}