NEW YORK — The WNBA Finals will expand next year to a best-of-seven format, the league announced Thursday.
The Women’s National Basketball Association, which debuted in 1997, currently has a best-of-five format for the title round as well as its two series for the semifinals, with the quartet of first-round series using a best-of-three format.
“This will give our fans a championship series format that they are accustomed to seeing in other sports,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said before Game 1 of this year’s title series between the second-seeded Minnesota Lynx and the top-seeded New York Liberty.
Engelbert said the better-seeded teams will host the first, second, fifth and seventh games of the WNBA Finals.
The 12-team league with an eight-team postseason bracket also will be changing the opening round to give the lower-seeded team at least one home game. The higher-seeded team will host the opener, as well as Game 3 if it’s necessary. This year’s first-round pairings had the higher-seeded team hosting the first two games, and all four series were sweeps.