Following a historic 2024 season, the WNBA delivered a slight viewership increase. The 2025 WNBA season averaged 969,000 viewers across ESPN networks, Ion, and CBS, a 3% increase in viewership relative to last year, according to Sports Media Watch. 

The numbers, however, are a little complicated. They include Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement, which is expected to bump up viewership numbers across the board. 

The results across networks were mixed. 

2025 WNBA season viewership per network

• ESPN/ABC (25 games): 1.3 million, +6%
• Ion (30 windows): 627,000, -6%
• CBS (9 games): 1.27 million, +16%

But for a league that struggled to pull a million viewers to its finals games just two years ago, the ratings are an indication of a new baseline.

Lasting Caitlin Clark Effect

Clark’s absence was a clear blow to ratings as she and the Indiana Fever are still undoubtedly the league’s biggest viewership draw.

The four most-watched games of the year all featured Clark, including the season’s most-watched game: the opener between the Fever and Chicago Sky that drew 2.7 million viewers. 

Ion aired eight Fever games this year, though only one featured Clark—the network’s most-watched game of the year (1.25 million). Clark, who played in all 40 Fever regular-season games last year, was part of just one game that aired on CBS, which drew the network’s season high of 2.2 million viewers. 

But the Fever were able to maintain a significant following even without Clark. CBS aired two Indiana games that Clark missed, and they were the only other games to draw more than 1.3 million viewers.

On Ion, the other seven Fever games averaged 954,000 viewers compared to 1.19 million for the eight Fever games on the network in 2024. However, those were significantly more than the 505,000 viewers for 22 non-Fever games.

Non-Fever games, however, still saw a viewership bump. The 505,000 viewership number on Ion is up nearly 15% compared to 440,000 for 18 non-Fever games last year.

After dismantling the Seattle Storm in Game 1 of the first round of the WNBA playoffs, the Las Vegas Aces are one of the league’s title favorites alongside the No. 1 seed Minnesota Lynx. 

That idea seemed inconceivable just six weeks ago when, on Aug. 2, the Aces lost by 53 points to the Lynx and fell to 14–14, a game away from falling out of the playoff picture. 

Las Vegas has won 17 straight games since then, including a 16-game winning streak to close out the season, the second-longest regular-season winning streak in WNBA history. The turnaround has shut down plenty of the questions that surfaced during the season.

One centered on the team’s roster construction. After back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, the Aces didn’t make the Finals last year. While the roster faced depth questions, the team decided to replace All-Star Kelsey Plum with Jewell Loyd, another veteran All-Star guard.

By Aug. 2, Loyd was having one of the worst statistical seasons of her career, while the Aces’ bench was last in the league in field goal percentage and plus-minus.

There were also some doubts surrounding head coach Becky Hammon, especially after she lost assistant coaches Natalie Nakase (Golden State Valkyries) and Tyler Marsh (Chicago Sky) to head coaching positions around the league. Las Vegas was below Nakase and the Valkyries in the standings with just over a month left in the season.

But Hammon made a key change in late July that proved to be one of the season’s key turning points. She decided to have Loyd, a six-time All-Star and the 2023 WNBA scoring champion, come off the bench July 27. The Aces have lost just one game since Loyd moved to the bench: the Aug. 2 defeat to the Lynx.

A’ja Wilson also forced her way back into the MVP conversation alongside Lynx star Napheesa Collier, who missed significant time in the back of the season, and Phoenix Mercury big Alyssa Thomas. The two-time MVP finished the season as the league leader in points (23.4) and blocks (2.3), and she was second in rebounds (10.2) per game. 

The Aces are far from assured of a title, especially with a now-healthy Lynx expected to stand across them in the Finals. But with the majority of the league entering free agency in the offseason (the Aces having just one player under contract for next year), the miraculous turnaround is at least a strong showcase entering the most consequential offseason in WNBA history. 

A massive change in how public companies report their financial results that is now under consideration could reshape the business of sports.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he is aiming to shift reporting rules from required quarterly reports to twice yearly for publicly traded companies. The move is subject to approval from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. Trump, however, said it would bring the country in alignment with other parts of the world, particularly China and Europe, and allow for a greater corporate focus on longer-term initiatives.

“This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Trump has several of his own appointments in key SEC leadership positions, including commission chair Paul Atkins. The president also proposed this change in his first term, but the commission chair at the time, Jay Clayton, another Trump appointee, resisted it. 

Quarterly earnings reports have been required in American commerce for all publicly traded companies since 1970, and changing that would represent a seismic alteration in the country’s business norms. Some investors have cautioned it would lead to far less transparency and greater volatility in the financial markets, and potentially an increased window for financial wrongdoing. 

Advocates of the change, however, believe it would help move the U.S. beyond short-term thinking that can be a dominant feature of the markets. 

Impacts Across Sports

The move to twice-yearly reporting, if implemented, would affect many companies with a large presence in sports, particularly media, such as Apple, NBC Sports parent Comcast, ESPN parent Disney, Fox, Netflix, CBS Sports parent Paramount Skydance, and TNT Sports parent Warner Bros. Discovery.

Public ownership is similarly common in the sports apparel, equipment, and footwear businesses, including companies such as Adidas, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Nike. Some companies with leagues and properties, such as UFC and WWE parent TKO Group Holdings, are also publicly owned, as is the sports betting duopoly, DraftKings and FanDuel, the latter through its parent Flutter Entertainment. 

The heavily seasonal nature of sports would certainly make it harder to have a real-time understanding of how those companies are performing. In many instances, most or all of many league seasons would come and go between semi-annual earnings reports. 

Those companies’ quarterly reports have also provided key insights into the impact of Trump’s policies on the economy, such as his tariffs, and also the accelerating shifts in media consumption. That all is now on the potential cusp of change.

“We believe the switch to semi-annual from quarterly reporting has moved from improbable to probable, though not guaranteed,” wrote TD Cowen Washington Research Group managing director Jaret Seiberg in a research note Monday.

The US Open has finally closed the book on 2025 with another set of records measuring fan activity around the tennis major, but the historic totals didn’t happen without some headaches along the way. 

The U.S. Tennis Association said Monday that the final attendance for the tournament was 1.14 million, a new record and 9% higher than last year’s total of 1.049 million. As was the case last year, the 2025 number is inclusive of both preliminary competition and the main draw. 

That topline number, similar to recent years, continues to showcase the surging popularity of the US Open and its unrivaled ability to showcase tennis to the masses. There are some growing strains under the total, though. 

The attendance of U.S. President Donald Trump for the men’s singles final Sept. 7 between winner Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner caused widespread security issues and a 48-minute delay in the start of the match. More broadly, the growth of the US Open is increasingly showing its weight across multiple areas, including more difficult fan access to and within the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, on local mass transit, and in area neighborhoods.

The release of the attendance number this year also diverged heavily from recent practice. In prior years, that figure normally arrived just hours after the men’s final and the conclusion of the tournament. This year, it wasn’t announced until Monday afternoon, eight days later.

The 15 days of the main US Open draw, expanded by a day this year in a move unpopular among players, had an attendance of 905,255, also up 9% from last year. The preceding fan week drew a record 239,307, up 10% and boosted in part by a reimagined mixed doubles championship.

Big on TV

ESPN, meanwhile, reported banner numbers last week of its own for coverage of the US Open. The men’s final between Alcaraz and Sinner averaged 3 million viewers, an 82% surge from last year’s final and the best number for that event since 2015.

The women’s final, won by Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday, averaged 2.4 million viewers, up 50% from 2024.

Both measures are further examples of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel audience measurement system. The recently introduced process is designed to provide a fuller, more accurate view of viewership patterns, including tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

The start of the 2025 season has seen a similar boost under the new process.

Serving Up Record Sips

The USTA also said more records were set in and around the US Open, most notably the sale of 738,459 Honey Deuce signature cocktails that represented a 32% increase from the 2024 number.

Overall, US Open merchandise sales grew 27% year-over-year, while the tournament’s digital platforms totaled 47 million visits, up 19% from 2024, and social media interactions on official channels reached 3.1 million, up 34%.