Interest in the Lynx kept building during the WNBA Finals.

The TV rating for Game 1 at the Target Center in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market was 3.4, according to ESPN sources. What that means is that 3.4 percent of the 1,732,000 TV sets in the Twin Cities area were tuned to ESPN. So people in nearly 59,000 households were watching the Lynx and Atlanta that Sunday night.

For Game 2, which was on ESPN2 on Wednesday, the local TV rating jumped to 4.3. So nearly 74,500 households were watching that game, also at Target Center.

Game 3 on Friday in Atlanta, again on ESPN2, had a 5.1 rating. That means slightly more than 88,000 households tuned into the Lynx's WNBA title-clinching game.

The Twin Cities are the 15th largest TV market in the country with 1,732,000 TV households. TV ratings refer to the percentage of all homes with TVs tuned into a program.

NATIONAL LOOK

Nationally, viewership of the WNBA Finals was up 4 percent from last year when Seattle swept Atlanta 3-0. The 2011 Finals on ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 515,000 viewers per game, up from 495,000 last year.

Game 3's audience was up 10 percent from last year, from 545,000 on ABC and ESPN2 in 2010 to 600,000 this year.