WNBA has highest attendance in six years in 2017, sets records for social media and merchandising
The WNBA announced that the league scored its highest attendance in six years and set records for social media and merchandise during the 2017 regular season. According to the league:
- The WNBA registered its highest total attendance (1,574,078) and highest average attendance (7,716) since 2011.
- Three teams had double-digit attendance growth: Los Angeles Sparks (+17.8%), Connecticut Sun (+15.3%) and Minnesota Lynx (+12.3%).
- The Sparks had their highest average attendance (11,350) since 2002, while the Lynx had its highest average attendance (10,407) since its inaugural season in 1999.
- The WNBA reached nearly 14 million likes and followers across all league, team and player social platforms this season, growing by 15% with the addition of two million fans from last season.
- The WNBA Facebook page achieved 1 million likes this season. The league broke records with more than 679 million impressions (+59%) and over 140 million video views (+233%) versus last year.
- This regular season saw record sales on WNBAStore.com, an increase of 18% over last year.
- During its inaugural season on Twitter, the WNBA averaged 613,000 unique viewers per game. The Mercury vs. the Dallas Wings (5/14), the San Antonio Stars vs. the Wings (5/25) and the Mercury vs. the Lynx (7/14) were the three most-viewed games, averaging 1.1 million unique viewers.
- FanDuel contests received over 2.2 million total entries in the first season of the WNBA’s one-day fantasy offerings.
