How a grainy cell phone livestream of the Sky and Lynx WNBA preseason game got nearly 1 million views
It was the darnedest thing that happened on Friday night — with WNBA fans wanting to see the Chicago Sky (with Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese) and Minnesota Lynx play in their preseason game, they were mad when they found out WNBA League Pass didn’t carry it.
So they found the next best thing: someone on X (formerly Twitter) livestreaming the game while in attendance … on their phone. It came from user @heyheyitsalli, and the stream had hundreds of thousands of viewers at certain times, with The Athletic reporting it got nearly a million views total.
Here’s the livestream that popped up:
lynx vs sky preseason game!! https://t.co/fOHriWWcVV
— alli (@heyheyitsalli) May 4, 2024
And the WNBA apologizing for its app showing the game was available on League Pass:
Apologies!
Our App is incorrectly showing that every preseason game (including CHI vs MIN) is available on League Pass. But you *can* watch IND vs DAL tonight at 8pm ET in a FREE preview of WNBA League Pass on the WNBA App. Also streaming free on the app will be the Canada Game… pic.twitter.com/4JGk82N3gM
— WNBA (@WNBA) May 3, 2024
None other than Sue Bird reposted it!
This is amazing . I hope you got that mophie! https://t.co/Ng5GuV6JEH
— Sue Bird (@S10Bird) May 4, 2024
And Alli reacted:
y’all these are some of THE WILDEST numbers WOW pic.twitter.com/DJF6Xloss1
— alli (@heyheyitsalli) May 4, 2024
there’s a postgame sth thing that we’re doing but i’m gonna *attempt* to sift through all of my mentions/follows/replies later tonight. glad the stream worked well enough for everyone!!
— alli (@heyheyitsalli) May 4, 2024
I asked Cheryl Reeve about @heyheyitsalli streaming tonight's Lynx/Sky preseason game from within the arena and getting 230k viewers.
"To really ensure that this is a movement, we have to capitalize on those things. And so we'll learn."
Full comments: https://t.co/rQSnaOmOgU pic.twitter.com/xC7wftXvt0
— Jack Borman (@jrborman13) May 4, 2024
this is so wild https://t.co/WbTQO0CpKn
— alli (@heyheyitsalli) May 4, 2024
It IS so wild!