We're just a few games away from the end of the 2025 WNBA regular season and the start of the WNBA playoffs. The WNBA has now shared its schedule for the playoffs and the Finals with one important change that fans will love. On Wednesday, the WNBA shared its complete schedule for the WNBA playoffs ...
The WNBA Has Made An Important Change To Its Playoff Schedule originally appeared on The Spun.
We're just a few games away from the end of the 2025 WNBA regular season and the start of the WNBA playoffs. The WNBA has now shared its schedule for the playoffs and the Finals with one important change that fans will love.
On Wednesday, the WNBA shared its complete schedule for the WNBA playoffs and Finals. The seven games will be on October 3, October 5, October 8, October 10, October 12, October 15 and October 17.
More importantly: Of those seven games, only two of them will be taking place on a Sunday, meaning that the WNBA will not be competing against the NFL for views as directly this year. By contrast, last year the majority of WNBA Finals games were contested at the same time as NFL games.
60% of WNBA Finals games went up against the NFL last year.
— ✏️Jacob Feldman (@JacobFeldman4) August 20, 2025
Down to 29% this year (if the Finals go 7 games).
Nice! https://t.co/UQGfVUqwiS
Not good enough
While there are certainly fewer games competing directly against the NFL during the WNBA playoffs, the fact of the matter is there are still anywhere from half a dozen to over a dozen playoff games primed to compete directly against the NFL and even college football over the next two months.
As a result, fans have taken to social media to mock the WNBA for trying to take on the NFL anyways:
"I genuinely hope the WNBA playoffs moving forward get away from having games on Sundays during NFL games. Those viewership numbers would skyrocket. Game 1 of the playoffs during the second week of the NFL season in the middle of games? Yikes," one user remarked.
"No one hates the WNBA like the WNBA. This scheduling is atrocious," another wrote.
"Game 1s during NFL Sunday is a choice…." wrote a third.
In fairness to the WNBA, football dominates so many days of the week that just about sports league would be left in the dust by viewership. But it doesn't look like they'll be able to truly maximize attention until the number goes from a handful to zero.
A vast improvement
But in spite of those criticisms, the less the WNBA is competing against the NFL and college football, the better.
While it remains to be seen if Caitlin Clark will be a part of the Indiana Fever's playoff push and potential WNBA title run, we should certainly expect that ratings will go up in the WNBA Finals thanks to the changes in their dates.
The WNBA Has Made An Important Change To Its Playoff Schedule first appeared on The Spun on Aug 20, 2025
This story was originally reported by The Spun on Aug 20, 2025, where it first appeared.
Category: Basketball