On Sunday night, New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello proclaimed with exuberance that her team’s WNBA championship was one for the history books.
The Liberty had just outlasted the Minnesota Lynx in a must-win Game 5 overtime for their first title in the franchise’s 28-year history. It also marked the first major professional basketball title in New York City in more than four decades. “That makes me very proud,” Brondello said.
But the championship wasn’t the only time the history books were re-written during a landmark 2024 WNBA season.
“The finals mark the culmination of what I think is the most transformational year in the WNBA’s history,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert said last week before the finals. The series’ fifth game was the most-viewed finals game (2.2 million) in 25 years with viewership for the entire series up 115 percent compared to last year’s finals.
Four years after an “existential” moment, the WNBA ascended into the public zeitgeist like never before. Viewership (it was the most-viewed regular season ever across ESPN platforms with an average of 1.19 million viewers), attendance (up 48 percent league-wide from last year), merchandise sales (a 601 percent increase at the WNBA Store) and digital engagement (a single-season record…
