BERLIN — The FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup 2026 in Berlin delivered the most successful edition in history, drawing a modern-era record 236,015 fans and averaging 6,556 spectators per game to surpass the 145,519 recorded in 2022. The tournament set new highs across all major metrics, according to details shared Thursday.
Per the press release: “The FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup 2026 in Berlin, Germany was the most successful edition in history after setting incredible new highs across all major metrics.” The competition highlighted the global growth of the women’s game, with the attendance records achieved despite the last edition in Sydney, Australia staging 38 games compared to 36 games in Berlin.
Broadcast coverage reached unprecedented levels worldwide. In the USA on TNT, the group-stage game between the USA and Italy averaged 1.3 million viewers to become the most-watched women’s basketball game in TNT network history, while the Final averaged 1.2 million viewers and peaked at 1.5 million despite clashing with the start of the NFL season and the US Open tennis final. Overall tournament coverage across the linear network and HBO Max reached 12.3 million viewers, supported by significant exposure on TNT digital platforms Bleacher Report and House of Highlights. In France, a peak audience of 1.84 million watched France take on the USA in the Final on TF1’s TMC channel, with an average of 1.4 million, with games also on beIN SPORTS. In Spain, TVE’s broadcast of the Semi-Final between Spain and the USA reached almost 1.3 million viewers across linear and digital services, with Movistar carrying the Final weekend as Spain claimed third place. In host Germany, ProSieben’s broadcasts of Germany’s Semi-Final and Third-Place game each reached more than a million people, supplemented by Magenta, where the four games across the Final weekend reached a combined audience of almost 800,000. The highest live audience was on China’s CCTV-5, where an average of 14.1 million viewers watched China’s group-phase game against Czechia.
Social media and digital engagement also smashed 2022 marks. The competition surpassed 3.3 billion overall impressions, an increase of 175% and almost triple the previous edition, with engagement reaching 60 million — nearly fourfold compared with Sydney 2022 — and video views soaring to 1.4 billion, up 195%. Follower growth increased sixfold compared with 2022 to close to 900,000, with 400,000 new followers gained during the 2026 edition alone. The FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup Instagram account has grown to become the largest across FIBA’s women’s social media landscape at 222,000 followers, half of whom are female.
Website traffic more than tripled compared with 2022, with sessions reaching 4.9 million and page views topping 20 million — seven times higher than in 2022 — reflecting deeper browsing per visit. Editorial page views surpassed 1.85 million, a near six-fold increase, as the number of editorial pieces published doubled compared with four years ago. For the four semi-finalists, fans could watch across free-to-air television, pay-per-view and streaming services including Courtside 1891 on DAZN and social media.