Despite Reports, ESPN Head Expects WNBA to Continue Negotiating New Broadcast Deal Alongside NBA
Speaking with Axios, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro said that he believes the two leagues will continue negotiating as a single unit.
ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro doesn’t want the WNBA to be the one that got away. He also doesn’t expect the league’s games to be going anywhere; the WNBA played 25 games across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 last season, and though it’s in line for a big raise from the $60 million per season that it currently collects from its broadcast partners, Pitaro confirmed to Axios recently that he does not believe the league will change its negotiating style or partners before signing its next contract.
- The WNBA has been negotiating its deal jointly with the NBA, but recent reports have suggested it may try to break away and make a deal of its own.
- The WNBA’s current deal with broadcasters expires concurrently with the NBA’s after the 2024-25 season.
- Rising women’s basketball ratings on ESPN show the network would be best served keeping the WNBA.
The WNBA is currently at the bargaining table with ESPN and is conducting negotiations jointly with the NBA. Reports first surfaced last week that the WNBA could strike out from the NBA and try to make its own broadcasting deals with networks, potentially allowing it to collect even more from broadcasters than a deal hammered out alongside the NBA’s negotiating team.
But Pitaro told Axios that he believes that the deliberations will continue on their current course. ESPN would be unwise to let the WNBA get away; 2023 was the league’s highest-rated season in more than 20 years, and each game on linear TV pulled an average of 462,000 viewers. The WNBA Finals drew 728,000 viewers per game on average, which represents a 36% year-over-year increase.
Women’s college basketball has also been a smash hit for ESPN in the ratings. The 2023-24 NCAA women’s basketball regular season on ESPN was the network’s best since 2008-09, as viewership rose 37% YoY to 272,000 average watchers across 81 games. It was also the most-watched season of women’s college basketball on ESPN+ in the streamer’s history.
Now that the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament is underway, the big ratings are continuing to roll in for ESPN. The March 23 game between Caitlin Clark’s No. 1 Iowa Hawkeyes and the No. 16 Holy Cross Crusaders pulled in 3.23 million viewers, the most-watched opening-round game in the history of the women’s tournament. Last year’s Women’s March Madness national championship game pulled 9.9 million viewers, becoming the most-viewed men’s or women’s college basketball game in the network’s history. Clark is set to be drafted into the WNBA this year, which will almost certainly draw even more fan attention to the league, giving ESPN all the more incentive to keep the league’s games on its airwaves.
Does ESPN Have the Cash to Renew with the WNBA?
Pitaro’s expressed confidence certainly suggests that ESPN won’t have a tough time coming up with the money to give the league the raise it wants. Reports have suggested that the WNBA wants to boost its annual rights fee income from around $60 million to between $80 and $100 million per season.
Despite Pitaro’s certainty, ESPN has quite a few demands on its cash reserves these days. The league recently locked up the College Football Playoff through 2032 in a deal worth nearly $8 billion, and it also has two streaming services planned for release by 2025: a joint venture sports streamer involving ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery channels intended to launch this fall, and a standalone ESPN streamer that’s planned to hit the market by next year. Both platforms will obviously require hefty investments on ESPN’s part.
These myriad financial demands could help explain why ESPN is seeking a strategic investment partner and has been in contact with sports leagues like the NFL as well as tech companies about purchasing a minority stake in the channel. Even the deep pockets of its parent company Disney can’t give ESPN unlimited funds, but it continues to be confident that the WNBA’s new broadcast deal will be part of the NBA’s renewal instead of a separate agreement.
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