As the NBA’s new 11-year, nearly $8 billion media rights package came together this summer, many questioned how much of a say WNBA leadership had over its portion of the deal.
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert believes the “historic” deal benefited from being attached to the NBA deal.
Historically, the NBA apportioned a small amount of its broadcast revenue to the WNBA, but the women’s league did not have a real seat at the table to negotiate for itself. While under the new deal, the WNBA will receive nearly $200 million annually (more than triple its current broadcast revenues), some, including the legendary Cheryl Miller, called out the league for not pushing hard enough.
To that, Engelbert said the NBA connection was actually a “huge advantage” as the WNBA’s schedule helped prove year-round value to media partners Disney, Amazon, and NBC.
“That was a huge advantage for us, and I think we helped to add days to what the NBA could provide in live programming,” Engelbert told John Ourand on his podcast The Varsity . “I think it was worth a lot for us.”
Overall, Engelbert believes the WNBA was able to capitalize on viewership momentum from the past two NCAA seasons and interest in the 2024 WNBA regular season. She heard from broadcasters that they were thrilled for the young star players entering the league.
“It exceeded all my expectations of where we’d be at this point in our transformation,” Engelbert said. “If you’re a media company, you want to buy the rights to someone who has a 10 to 12 to 15-year run of great players. That’s what we have, so that’s what we sold, that’s what we pitched.”
Engelbert sorted the new NBA-partnered contract as “Tranche One,” and expects to renegotiate the league’s “Tranche Two” deals with CBS and Scripps later this year. She predicted to Ourand that the league will clear $260 million in total annual revenue once those deals are added into the pot. The WNBA can opt out of its 11-year deals with Disney, Amazon and NBC after three years.
Still, Engelbert believes getting this deal done now will go a long way toward the overall growth of the league.
“When you’re a league of our size and scale and you want to give confidence to your owners that you have a long-term, fixed revenue stream, not variable, 11 years is amazing with now our owners now feeling so confident that now they can invest in their team, invest in practice facilities, invest in player experience,” she said. “That’s why a long-term deal, to me, is good.”
Beyond media rights negotiations, everyone from fans to WNBA owners have long wanted the women’s league to split from the NBA and go it alone. The NBA formed the WNBA in the late-1990s, but fewer than half of WNBA teams are now owned by NBA teams.
Engelbert believes that arrangement also helps the WNBA.
“There’s a reason why the WNBA is the longest-tenured women’s professional sports league in the country,” Engelbert said. “There are a lot of advantages, especially in professional basketball and especially for a league of our size and scale.”
Engelbert listed off the promotional value and business acumen as just some of the numerous benefits of the WNBA remaining tied to the NBA. But she emphasized that at the end of the day, she is free to run the WNBA as a standalone entity.
“There’s no need to do some kind of splits like everyone talks about, because we’re running our own business,” she said.
Reports after the latest deal suggested this could be the final deal the WNBA negotiates together with the men’s league, but for now, Engelbert believes those ties are a net positive amid exponential growth in women’s hoops.
[ The Varsity Podcast ]
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