WNBA to Ink $2.2 Billion Media Rights Deal With ESPN, NBC, Prime Video; Still Has 2 More Packages to Sell
WNBA to Ink $2.2 Billion Media Rights Deal With ESPN, NBC, Prime Video; Still Has 2 More Packages to Sell
The league will almost quadruple its current annual revenue from its TV deals, and could make even more.
The new broadcast deal for the NBA has dominated headlines this week, but now it’s the WNBA’s turn. As first reported by The Athletic, the league has agreed to new agreements with ESPN, Amazon’s Prime Video, and NBC to broadcast its games for the next 11 years. The deals are reportedly worth $2.2 billion over the course of their contracts. This represents a massive raise for the WNBA, coming at a time when the value of women’s sports broadcasting agreements is decidedly on the rise.
Key Details:
- The deal pays an average of $200 million per season.
- The contract allows the WNBA to sell up to two more game packages to other outlets.
- ESPN, Amazon, and NBC have agreed to revisit the deals if they are undervalued three years from now.
The WNBA’s new deal will pay out $200 million per season, nearly four times as much as its current deals do annually. Its current deals with ESPN, ION, CBS, and Amazon pay roughly $60 million per annum. Those contracts will expire following the 2025 season; the new deals will take effect for the 2026 season. Presumably, the deal will send games to ESPN’s broadcast network sibling ABC, and NBC will stream some contests on Peacock.
While the deal’s $2.2 billion total valuation is impressive for the league, the deals stipulate that the rights payments could increase, and relatively soon. Under the terms of the new deal, the WNBA is allowed to sell up to two more rights packages to new providers, and those additional bundles could bring in another $60 million per year. In early July, ESPN president of content Burke Magnus said his network was willing to share the WNBA Finals with another outlet, and a split of finals games could be included with one of the additional games packages.
In the end, the WNBA did not decide to split away from the NBA and try to make new deals for itself. That prospect was raised earlier this year, but commissioner Cathy Engelbert wanted to stick with the NBA, as negotiating together allowed them to offer prospective partners the temptation of year-round professional basketball. Engelbert had hoped to at least double the revenue from her league’s current TV deals and has achieved that goal with room to spare.
Are the WNBA’s Rights Still Undervalued?
WNBA officials can justly pat themselves on the back for reaching this deal, as a strong case can be made that the former agreements dramatically underpaid WNBA teams. As reported by Front Office Sports, WNBA players make between $64,000 and $252,000 per year, a paltry sum in terms of how much professional athletes make. Ratings for WNBA games soared in 2023, and that pattern is continuing this year; Sports Media Watch reports that 15 WNBA games have averaged 1 million viewers or more this season, tied for the most in league history with two months left in the season.
The contracts have a clause built in to allow the league to renegotiate its contracts with the three main partners — Amazon, Comcast, and Disney — after three years. The new money should lead to a significant bump in the salary cap, which will be a massive improvement in a league in which players had to share hotel rooms for away games as recently as five years ago.
It will be intriguing to see which outlets step forward to try and claim the other two rights packages that the league is allowed to sell. Current partners CBS and ION will lose their WNBA inventory after 2025 as of now, and thus make logical candidates to step forward and buy into the new deal. Warner Bros. Discovery could also make a play for the rights, which would allow it to keep some professional basketball if it loses the NBA after 2025.
Women’s sports are having a justly deserved moment; the National Women’s Soccer League agreed to a $240 million broadcast deal with various partners — including Prime Video and ESPN — last November. The WNBA’s new agreements push that ball forward even more, and with the attention that Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and other young superstars are bringing to the league, the sky is the limit for its popularity.
Prime Video
Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.