In a press release on July 24th , the Women’s National Basketball Association announced a new 11-year media rights deal. This deal features partnerships with Disney and Amazon Prime Video. The news came alongside the WNBA announcing its renewal with partners The Walt Disney Company and Amazon Prime Video, and a new agreement with NBCUniversal.
Before 2022
Older fans of the WNBA argue that this deal is long past due, and the only thing that’s been holding back large audiences is a lack of access to games. In 2022, only 25 games were broadcasted on live television: nine regular season games on ABC, five on ESPN, and 10 on ESPN2. These games included the 2022 WNBA All-Star Game. In 2022, there were 432 regular season games - or 36 games for each of the 12 teams.
Before 2023, the 13 WNBA live games on ESPN drew an average of 548,000 viewers in the United States. In 2023, eight games on the ABC network averaged 647,000 viewers, up 18 percent from the four games the network showed in the first half of the season.
In 2023, the WNBA announced that ESPN would show up to 52 possible games throughout the regular season and playoffs. This was announced after extending the regular season to 40 games per team. The WNBA recorded its most-watched regular season in 21 years during the 2023 season. National viewership was up over 21 percent over the 2022 season and set new highs across the WNBA digital platforms, social media management, and sports betting (per WNBA.com ).
2024 Shatters WNBA Records
This year, the WNBA opened the season with the highest attendance in 26 years and the most-watched games ever on National Television.
This happened after the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship recorded record numbers in TV ratings. Prior to 2023, somewhere between 4,000,000 and 4, 500, 000 people watched the women's championship. In 2023, 9.9 million people tuned in to watch Reese and the Louisiana State University Tigers beat Clark and the University of Iowa Hawks. In 2024, more than double the number of viewers tuned in for the Clark versus South Carolina match-up—thus, for the first time, making the women’s tournament receive more viewers than the NCAA’s men’s tournament.
The 2024 WNBA All-Star Game became the most-watched ASG in WNBA history, bringing in 3.44 million viewers, per The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch.
The May 20th Connecticut Sun versus Indiana Fever game averaged 1.56 million viewers, making it the most-viewed WNBA game on ESPN. On May 25th, the New York Liberty versus Minnesota Lynx averaged 704,000 viewers, making it the most-viewed game on CBS ever.
So what’s the deal?
Next season’s deal is valued at $2.2 billion, or $200 million per year.
In this new agreement, more than 125 regular-season and playoff games will be televised nationally each season. This includes a minimum of 25 regular-season games on Disney platforms, 50 regular-season games on NBCU platforms, and 30 regular-season games on Prime Video. Disney and NBCU will televise the games in key international markets, and Prime Video will distribute games globally to more than 200 million Prime members worldwide.
The WNBA is expected to add additional media partners that will further expand the reach and accessibility of WNBA games as of the 2026 season.
"Partnering with Disney, Amazon, and NBCU marks a monumental chapter in WNBA history and clearly demonstrates the significant rise in value and the historic level of interest in women's basketball," WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. "These agreements allow the league to continue to build a long-term and sustainable growth model for the future of women's basketball and sports which will benefit WNBA players, teams, and fans.”
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