{"id":177839,"date":"2025-09-24T04:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T04:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/177839\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T04:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T04:40:07","slug":"2025-wnba-playoffs-first-round-was-the-second-most-watched-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/177839\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 WNBA Playoffs first round was the second-most-watched ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s become clich\u00e9 at this point to note that the WNBA is chugging along just fine while Caitlin Clark is out dealing with her injuries. Still, it\u2019s always good to note that even without her and other big-name stars in this year\u2019s playoffs, the ratings continue to look solid.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, ESPN announced that the first round of the 2025 WNBA Playoffs, which took place recently, garnered an average audience of 943,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2. That makes it the second-most-watched first round in league history, trailing only last year\u2019s version, which featured Clark (briefly).<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">ESPN scored its 2nd most-watched <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WNBAPlayoffs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#WNBAPlayoffs<\/a> First Round ever \ud83d\udc4f<\/p>\n<p>Semifinals continue this week on ESPN networks <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/lkD3cuzTBc\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/lkD3cuzTBc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ESPNPR\/status\/1970610159560032258?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Per ESPN, Game 2 in the series between the Atlanta Dream and Indiana Fever averaged 1.5 million viewers, making it the second most-watched first-round Game 2. Meanwhile, the second contest between the Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm averaged 1.1 million viewers, ranking it fourth all-time.<\/p>\n<p>That Dream-Fever series, which went three games, was the second-most-watched first-round series to date, averaging 1.2 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2. It\u2019s behind only 2024\u2019s Fever-Sun series on ABC and ESPN last year (2.2 million).<\/p>\n<p>Viewership is also up 125% from 2023, signaling that even if some of the biggest names, such as Clark, Angel Reese, and Sophie Cunningham, aren\u2019t playing, the league is capitalizing on the recent boom in interest.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t hurt that Clark\u2019s Fever made the playoffs and advanced to the semifinals, which means she\u2019ll be on TV even if she\u2019s in street clothes. It also didn\u2019t hurt that three of the four series went the distance, featured a notable upset (Fever over Dream), and included the dethroning of the defending champions.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN also noted that WNBA Countdown averaged 382,000 viewers in the first round, a 4% uptick from last season.<\/p>\n<p>The second round of the 2025 WNBA Playoffs is currently underway.<\/p>\n<p>\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s become clich\u00e9 at this point to note that the WNBA is chugging along just fine while Caitlin&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434,70908,105715],"class_list":["post-177839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-playoffs","tag-wnba-ratings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}