Las Vegas Aces, Favorites for the 2025 WNBA Title
After an uncertain start to the season, the Las Vegas Aces are shaping up to be the favorites to win their third WNBA championship in four seasons. They will face the Phoenix Mercury in the 2025 final. After their overtime victory 107-98 over the Indiana Fever in game five of the semifinal series, the Aces opened as favorites with a -135 odds over the Mercury (+115) for the 2025 WNBA Finals. The Aces will start the series at home on Friday night, being favored by 3 points in the first game. The Aces’ irregular start to the season, with a 14-14 record, raised their odds to +3000 in mid-August, after having started the campaign as favorites with a +400 odds. However, they managed to string together 16 consecutive victories to finish the regular season and entered the postseason with a +260 odds for the championship, only behind the Minnesota Lynx (+110). Despite the impressive streak, the bookmakers managed to stay one step ahead of the bettors in relation to Las Vegas, keeping the team’s price relatively low even as it began to win.Although Las Vegas was not a very popular bet, Phoenix was even less so, attracting only 4.2% of the bets and 8.7% of the money to win the title. Even after the semifinals were defined on September 19, the Mercury attracted a little less than 20% of the bets, the least of the four remaining teams.
Phoenix defeated last year’s finalists, the Lynx and the champions New York Liberty, on their way to the 2025 Finals. The Lynx had entered the playoffs as favorites (+110), and the Liberty are the most backed team to win the championship by total bets (30.9%). The greatest responsibility in all major betting houses was for the Fever, who were close to reaching the Finals despite significant injuries to superstar Caitlin Clark and other players. At the beginning of the season, bettors backed Indiana with a large amount, contributing 41% of the bets on DraftKings, compared to 20% of the next closest team, the Lynx. BetMGM also reported nearly double the bets backing the Fever compared to the next closest team, characterizing the team as its biggest liability ahead of the Golden State Valkyries. To further underscore how improbable the 2025 Finals matchup was in the eyes of bettors and bookmakers, the Aces vs. Mercury game was the 25th-highest liability for the Exact Match market at BetMGM.
