{"id":864335,"date":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864335\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T04:56:12","slug":"espn-reports-its-most-watched-wnba-regular-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864335\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN Reports Its Most-Watched WNBA Regular Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-cd41d002-bb88-11f1-aaaf-87ba2df67b64\">ESPN delivered its most-watched WNBA regular season ever in 2026, marking the third straight year that regular season viewing set records.<\/p>\n<p>Across 29 games, the WNBA on ESPN networks averaged 1.37 million viewers, up 17% year-over-year.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-cd41d002-bb88-11f1-aaaf-87ba2df67b64-2\">ESPN presented 17 games this season, averaging 1.24 million viewers, up 32% year-over-year, while 12 games on ABC averaged 1.56 million viewers, up 9% year-over-year.<\/p>\n<p>The historic season also delivered significant growth among younger audiences. Viewership among persons 2-17 increased 29% year-over-year, while persons 18-24 grew 27%.<\/p>\n<p>Non-Indiana games averaged 984,000 viewers, up 24% year-over-year and its WNBA Countdown show averaged 595,000 viewers, up 27% year-over-year.<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p>The record-setting season was highlighted by five games averaging more than 2 million viewers. Those games were:<\/p>\n<p>Indiana Fever at Atlanta Dream \u2013 Aug. 16, ESPN: 2.58M viewersIndiana Fever at Chicago Sky \u2013 Aug. 8, ABC: 2.56M viewersIndiana Fever at Minnesota Lynx \u2013 Aug. 2, ABC: 2.52M viewersDallas Wings at Indiana Fever \u2013 May 9, ABC: 2.49M viewersNew York Liberty at Indiana Fever \u2013 Aug. 11, ESPN: 2.01M viewers<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-01cab726-bb89-11f1-9bf0-9b88fc7e1fdc\">Indiana Fever-Atlanta Dream on Aug. 16 led all WNBA games across ESPN networks this season and became the most-watched WNBA regular-season or postseason game ever on cable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">The professional video industry&#8217;s #1 source for news, trends and product and tech information. Sign up below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN delivered its most-watched WNBA regular season ever in 2026, marking the third straight year that regular season&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-864335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864335","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=864335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}