The WNBA Is Shattering Attendance Records and Earning Millions of New Fans

Everyone really does watch women’s sports. According to a new report in the Sports Business Journal, the WNBA shattered its attendance record in 2026, drawing 3.79 million fans to games this season — a 20% year-over-year increase.SBJ attributes this record-breaking high in part to the 25 WNBA home games that were moved to larger venues this year to account for the spiking demand for women’s basketball tickets. The three teams with the highest overall attendance were the Golden State Valkyries, who only began play in the 2025 season; the New York Liberty, who play at the high-capacity Barclays Center; and the Indiana Fever, who boast superstar player Caitlin Clark as a major draw. By percentage, the Atlanta dream earned the largest year-over-year attendance boost, with a nearly 55% increase from 2025.These in-person attendance records were also accompanied by the league’s best regular-season viewership numbers since 2000, as SBJ also noted. Games drew an average just north of 770,000 viewers, with 320.7 million total hours consumed — a 117% spike compared to 2025, according to SBJ. The most-watched game in the regular season was an August match-up between the Fever and the Chicago Sky that averaged 3.31 million viewers on NBC. Notably, these dramatic increases in viewership and attendance — a testament to the rising popularity of women’s professional sports — were accompanied this season by increased cultural tumult and controversy within the league.Fever player Sophie Cunningham’s July comments supporting the exclusion of transgender players from women’s sports, and the subsequent right-wing media firestorm that ensued, forced the league to meet to discuss its eligibility policy as two former NBA players attempted to declare for the draft.Tensions within the WNBA have also erupted around Clark, a major draw for new fans who has also become the center of a culture war around race in the league. In July, eleven Republican lawmakers sent a letter to