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Nearly four hours before Game 4 of the WNBA Finals began, Marqweesha “Marsh” Guthrie had already made her way to Barclays Center. She has been a longtime New York Liberty fan since she was a 6-year-old girl from Jersey watching in awe ballplayers who looked like her playing the game she loved. That passion still burns, and when I met Marsh on Wednesday afternoon, she still sounded a little hoarse from her Game 3 experience on Sunday.
“I lost my voice in the second quarter,” she said, because according to fandom rules, giving up your voice for your favorite team is always justified.
For fans like Marsh, the league office couldn’t have planned a better matchup. The defending champion Las Vegas Aces with their Super Friends squad against the Liberty and all their stars playing in America’s largest media market. And that showdown, which ended with Aces players sprinting down the court at the buzzer to become the league’s first back-to-back champions in 21 years, appealed to basketball purists and celebrities alike. Tom Brady and LeBron James attended Game 1 in Vegas; James later shared a highlight of Marine Johannès with three fire emojis with his 52.7 million followers
In addition to bragging about the attention on the field, the league and its network partners also boasted about the increase in viewership after the first three games of the finals averaged 673,000 viewers on ABC and ESPN, the highest number in two decades. But don’t be blinded by the celebrity glitz or impressed by numbers carefully chosen to grab headlines. Rather, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for this 27-year-old league to grow up and truly have its moment.
That shouldn’t be a difficult question because it happens elsewhere in women’s sports. A volleyball game in Nebraska drew 92,003 fans, a record attendance for a women’s sporting event. An exhibition basketball game in Iowa draws 55,646 spectators, nearly doubling the previous single-game record for women’s basketball.
This dynamic, which is evident in sold-out football arenas, does not stop at the gates. Last March, the LSU-Iowa championship game set the benchmark for women’s basketball ratings. The clash between two powerhouses, LSU’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, drew an average of nearly 10 million viewers, with the most-watched portion of the game peaking at 12.6 million.
The W, despite its dream matchup featuring A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum and Chelsea Gray (who missed Game 4 due to injury) against Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones, didn’t achieve anywhere near those “wow” numbers. We’ll see what numbers that sharp Game 4 brought in – on a quiet night of sports that saw the only MLB playoff game decided early – but was the last time a WNBA Finals game averaged more than a million viewers in 2003. And for non-playoffs, the league has to look back to Candace Parker’s rookie debut in 2008, when a regular-season game averaged at least a million viewers.
If you think seven-figure viewership is the Holy Grail that only a cultural earthquake can achieve, think again. This fall, “Professional Bull Riding” on CBS reached over 1.8 million viewers.
“[LSU-Iowa] Expectations for the event’s appeal have completely changed: from 5 million for the championship game last year to 9.9 million. I don’t think even the most optimistic forecast would have reached 9.9 million,” said Jon Lewis, who covers ratings trends and the industry for Sports Media Watch. “I would even put Colorado in college football, and no one thought Colorado would start drafting the way they are now. This is a shock. So what you’re seeing here is significant, meaningful “this changes things” growth. The WNBA hasn’t experienced growth that changes things.”
The highlight game in college, of course, comes at a time when fans have been taught to only care about March Madness. Scheduling the W’s glamor event during football season – with two of the four games airing in the middle of NFL Sundays – hasn’t helped ratings pressure. This has been the case for years under the structure of the current media deal, in which the finals are broadcast exclusively on ESPN and ABC. Since these networks don’t broadcast NFL games on Sundays, they filled that gap with the WNBA Finals. But if the deal ends in 2025, the league could do itself a favor by negotiating more control over when and where its finals games take place. Do you know how Bull Riding reached a million viewers? The event featured the best possible warm-up act to air after an NFL game. Imagine giving the WNBA’s biggest stars this kind of football matinee and the crowd they could attract.
Marsh, who bought season tickets this year after growing up a Liberty fan, sees progress but also has thoughts. She believes the W can grow significantly if the players just become bigger, household names.
“We broadcast our 3 p.m. games on ESPN, reach hundreds of thousands of viewers and compete with football,” Marsh said. “We as a society and as a sports club have to believe that if we set up the table, people will come and show up… but access is key and marketing is all year round.”
The league has many marketable stars – like Wilson, the two-time MVP and 2023 Finals MVP. It has the winning brand and personality, but Wilson was not chosen as the league’s cover girl for NBA 2k24 – that honor went to Ionescu. Wilson doesn’t have a signature shoe. Ionescu does. Her own team’s social media account didn’t seem to understand who exactly the face of the league should be, initially choosing a solo shot of Kelsey Plum, who went 2-for-12 from the field in Game 4, to include along with the final score to post.
It’s not just false advertising. The WNBA is also curbing its own free advertising. This year, the league announced a new media policy — proposed by the players’ association — that bans locker room access. The decision was strange considering that WNBA Players’ Association President Terri Jackson expressed before the season that the masses of media that gathered to televise Brittney Griner’s first press conference at the Coverage of all players should maintain the same energy.
Professional reporters aren’t exactly obsessed with watching athletes get dressed. Rather, in these more intimate spaces, reporters do the work of building trust with the athletes they cover. And with that trust comes professional relationships – relationships that produce more nuanced and insightful pieces that reveal athletes as people. If another major league tried to close its locker rooms, it would rightly be criticized. But professional women’s basketball players have largely been given a pass. Which should be even more concerning, since reporters should treat coverage of the WNBA with the same care as they would any other sport.
Even when the Aces won the title Wednesday night, reporters were locked out of the locker room. It wasn’t until shortly before midnight – nearly two hours after the game and for many reporters past the deadline – that the Aces invited members of the media to the relaxation area on the Liberty’s practice field. I think back to covering the Washington Mystics’ decisive win in 2019 and write about the flowing prosecco of La Marca and the players dancing and lingering in long embraces, being their authentic, cheering selves in their locker rooms, and can’t believe today’s players would stop this These scenes will not be captured for readers and fans.
When teams isolate themselves from the world, it is a step backwards. When the best player in the league receives a second award, even through her own team’s Instagram account, it slows progress. If the games end up in an unwinnable television slot, it puts the brakes on in an era of acceleration. Women’s sports are having a moment. There are casual fans, not just diehards like Marsh. When will this league decide it’s finally ready to find her?
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