After looking like a championship long shot for the first part of the season, the Las Vegas Aces will be favored against the Phoenix Mercury as they go for their third WNBA title in four seasons.
Following their 107-98 ]overtime win over the Indiana Fever in Game 5 of their semifinal series on Tuesday night, the Aces opened as -135 favorites over the Mercury (+115) for the 2025 WNBA Finals, according to ESPN BET. Las Vegas, which will begin the series at home on Friday night, opened as a 3-point favorite for Game 1.
The Aces' poor first half of the season, which saw them start 14-14, lengthened their odds to +3000 by mid-August after the team had entered the campaign among the favorites at +400. They then ripped off 16 consecutive wins to finish the regular season and entered the postseason with +260 championship odds, behind only the Minnesota Lynx at +110.
Despite the dramatic surge, sportsbooks were largely able to stay ahead of bettors on Las Vegas, keeping the team's price relatively short even when it began to win. DraftKings (11%) and ESPN BET (12%) both report the Aces as only their fourth-most-backed team by handle for the title, and BetMGM says they are only the third-largest liability.
"We definitely took some money on them when we raised them up a bit, but we never raised them that high knowing that this could exactly happen," DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN just before the postseason. "They were going to be in the playoffs, and once they got in the playoffs, it's a team with experience that knows how to win. So yeah, you could have got a little bit higher price, but there was nothing out there that was a ridiculous price."
Although Las Vegas was not a super popular bet, Phoenix was even less so, attracting just 4.2% of the wagers and 8.7% of the money to win the title at ESPN BET; even once the semifinals were set on Sept. 19, the Mercury attracted slightly less than 20% of the handle, the least of the four remaining teams.
Phoenix took down both of last year's finalists, the Lynx and champion New York Liberty, on its way to the 2025 Finals. The former had entered the playoffs as the favorite (+110), and the latter is ESPN BET's most-backed team to win it all by total wagers (30.9%).
The largest liability at all major sportsbooks was easily the Fever, who came close to a Finals appearance despite major injuries to superstar Caitlin Clark and others. At the beginning of the season, bettors backed Indiana at a massive clip, contributing 41% of the handle at DraftKings compared with 20% for the next-closest team, the Lynx. BetMGM also reported almost double the handle backing the Fever compared with the next-closest team, characterizing the squad as its largest liability ahead of the underdog Golden State Valkyries.
To further underscore how unlikely the 2025 Finals matchup was in the eyes of bettors and bookmakers, Aces vs. Mercury was the 25th-largest liability for the Exact Matchup market at BetMGM.