New York Liberty favored to set single-season WNBA wins record despite loss to Fever
After opening at 32.5, the New York Liberty's regular-season win total moved up to 35.5 at BetMGM last week. And their loss to the Indiana Fever on Saturday wasn't enough to dislodge it.
The most games won in a single season by a WNBA team is 34. That means the Brooklyn squad is expected to make history.
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With a caveat: The WNBA expanded the schedule this year from 40 games to 44, so it's anticipated that the single-season win-total record might not stand much longer.
Sure, you could discount the Liberty's potential record as simply a factor of an expanded season. But, should New York surpass 34 wins, it's a new benchmark nonetheless, and a bellwether of growth to come.
WNBA regular-season wins odds
The Las Vegas Aces set the current record of 34 wins in 2023, beating the previous record of 29 wins held by the Phoenix Mercury since 2014. What else happened in 2023? The league expanded its schedule to 40 games. (The inaugural season had a 28-game schedule, but for most of league history, the regular season consisted of 34 games. It expanded to 36 in 2022, 40 in 2023 and 44 in 2025.)
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With schedule expansions inherently increasing the numbers, perhaps a better benchmark to pin on the wall is winning . That record is still held by the 1998 Houston Comets in the league's second season: The Comets went 27-3 for a 90 percent win percentage. To surpass that record, the Liberty need to clinch 40 wins this season. That's four games above the 'over' on their current win total on BetMGM.
'Whether New York is able to set a new win percentage record will likely come down to how they play in the month of August,' says Ben Pickman. 'In the middle of the month, they play eight games in a 16-day span, with three of those games coming against the Minnesota Lynx and two others (against the Las Vegas Aces and Los Angeles Sparks) in a West Coast swing.'
'It helps that New York will have played only home games from July 1 until July 28 (with the All-Star break squeezed in),' Pickman says. 'But the mid-August stretch, plus four of their last five games being on the road, means New York has a tough closing stretch. Who knows what they will need to play for by then, but those are some scheduling quirks to be aware of when considering their final record.'
Seven of those critical mid-August games will be nationally televised, including on ABC, NBA TV, ESPN, CBS and Prime Video.
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Both broadcasting and betting interest in the Liberty have been considerable, and BetMGM says they've received balanced action on the over and under for 35.5 total wins.
'The Liberty have been one of our most popular teams, both in futures and individual games,' Hannah Luther, sports trader at BetMGM, told . 'They received considerably more bets on the moneyline and spread in their last game against the Fever, which is notable because the Fever are almost always the more-bet-on team in their matchups.'
Are any other teams on track to set the new record?
The Minnesota Lynx are closing in on history, too, with a win total set just below 34. Betting the over means you think they'll at least tie the Aces' record, though they'd still need six additional wins to reach the Comets'.
And biggest losing streak goes to…
How about the other side of the spectrum? Not to be a Debbie Downer, but we could see another broken record this year: single-season losses. The Connecticut Sun's win total is set at 10.5 (implying over/under 33.5 losses), and the Dallas Wings is at 12.5 on BetMGM (over/under 31.5 losses).
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The record for the most games lost in a single season is 32, set by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2024 during a 40-game season, which translates to a 20 percent win percentage. The odds for the Sun and Wings suggest oddsmakers expect them to nearly hit or exceed that 32-game mark.
'The extra games this season give the Sun and Wings more opportunities to rack up losses,' Luther says. 'Two teams being at risk of breaking the loss record is a testament to how poorly they are performing. This is certainly a rebuilding year for both teams — with new coaches and new players, and the Sun owners potentially selling the team. We expect both teams to struggle all season, which is reflected in their low win totals.'
The 2011 Tulsa Shock hold the record for worst win percentage, having lost 31 of 34 games for a win percentage of 8.8 percent. To hit that low this year, a team would need three wins or fewer. The Wings currently sit at one win, and the Sun at two.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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