The WNBA’s single-season attendance record has fallen after 23 years, the league announced Thursday. The WNBA’s 13 franchises welcomed more than 2.5 million fans over 226 games this year, besting the 2002 record set by 16 teams across 256 games.
With three weeks left in the regular season and three rounds of postseason play ahead, the newly established attendance record will continue to rise.
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The league is in its 29th season, and five more teams are set to debut by 2030. That will bring the number of franchises to 18, with the new teams coming in Portland, Ore., Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia.
Among the attendance drivers this year was the debut of the Golden State Valkyries, the league’s first expansion team since 2008. The franchise sold out all of its home games in its inaugural season. This was also the first WNBA season with an expanded 44-game schedule, compared to the 40 games played last year and 32 games when the attendance record was established in 2002.
The WNBA is still seeing significant growth in viewership, too, with Front Office Sports reporting in late July that games are averaging 794,000 viewers across all networks this season. That represents a 21 percent increase from the league’s 2024 viewership average.
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Improved metrics have fueled ongoing debates over play as the league continues to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union. The deadline for a new CBA is Oct. 31, and many players have publicly called for higher salaries and revenue sharing as the league grows in popularity.
Though several stars, including Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier, the captains of the WNBA All-Star Game in July, have been sidelined for lengthy stretches with injuries, others have taken center stage in their place.
The Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers tied the WNBA’s rookie single-game scoring record on Wednesday, dropping 44 points against the Los Angeles Sparks. Bueckers’ feat matched Cynthia Cooper’s rookie single-game scoring record, set in 1997 during the WNBA’s inaugural season. At 23, Bueckers has reached 500 points more quickly than any rookie in WNBA history.
Earlier this month, reigning league MVP A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces had 32 points and 20 rebounds in a showdown with the Connecticut Sun. Wilson, a three-time MVP and seven-time All-Star, is the first WNBA player to score at least 30 points and snag at least 20 rebounds in a single game.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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