WNBA Preseason Goes Legit After 2M Fans Sought Out Pirated Stream

A year after a fan’s livestream of an otherwise inaccessible WNBA preseason game scared up more than two million views, the league has taken steps to ensure that all 15 of its spring scrimmages will be made available through its media partners.

The first four preseason outings will be televised, with the over-the-air network Ion tipping things off with a doubleheader on Friday, May 2. No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers makes her Dallas Wings debut against Jackie Young, A’ja Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces in the 7 p.m. ET window, while Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky are set to round out the night with an exhibition against the Brazilian National Team.

Ion’s regular-season coverage in 2024 averaged 670,000 viewers per game, up 133% versus its year-ago deliveries, and boasted seven broadcasts that drew north of 1 million impressions.

The following afternoon will feature Caitlin Clark and the Fever taking on the Washington Mystics, who have three of the top six draft picks on their roster, on NBA TV at 1 p.m. ET, before a quick 27-hour turnaround finds Indiana squaring up against the Brazilians on one of the ESPN-branded outlets. (Bristol will assign a specific network for the latter game based on how the NBA playoffs schedule shapes up that Sunday.)

The enthusiasm with which fans latched onto the illicit Sky-Lynx stream on May 3 of last year clearly wasn’t lost on WNBA execs. As many as 400,000 people watched the game live via the cellphone video Alli Schneider posted to her X account, a turnout that ballooned to some 2 million views within the first 24 hours after the Lynx had secured their 92-81 win. Disappointed fans who had been led to believe that the game would be made available through the WNBA League Pass began stumbling across Schneider’s on-site feed shortly after tipoff, and the numbers began skyrocketing after Sue Bird retweeted the link to her own followers.

ESPN/ABC’s WNBA coverage averaged 1.19 million viewers per game last season, good for a 170% gain versus Disney’s 2023 deliveries. All told, 22 WNBA telecasts averaged 1 million viewers or better during Clark’s rookie season; per Nielsen, the last time a league game had hit the seven-digits mark was in 2008. (For what it’s worth, Clark appeared in 19 of those 22 telecasts.)

The remainder of the preseason games, which culminate with a May 12 New York Liberty warmup against the Toyota Antelopes of the Japan Basketball League, will be available via the WNBA streaming app. This marks the first time the league has made all of its preseason contests available to a national audience.

The WNBA’s regular season will get underway on Friday, May 16, with the postseason set to tip off on Sunday, Sept. 14. For the first time in the league’s 29-year history, this year’s Finals will be decided in a best-of-seven series rather than the legacy best-of-five format.