The WNBA’s next national broadcast rights deal has been finalized. The league is expected to receive about $2.2 billion over the next 11 years in broadcast fees under its new deals, averaging $200 million per year, with the potential to earn more over that period, according to league sources familiar with the deals.
The NBA negotiated the WNBA’s new deals during the recently concluded rights negotiations, in which it reached an agreement with Disney, NBC and Amazon on an 11-year package worth about $75 billion. The WNBA’s national media rights deals are also with those companies; ESPN, NBC and Amazon will each have their own WNBA packages.
The NBA’s Board of Governors approved the media rights deals Tuesday, but they are not yet official because Warner Bros. Discovery, TNT’s parent company, maintains it has corresponding rights to an NBA rights package but has not yet decided whether to exercise them.
The WNBA’s current broadcast contracts, valued at about $50 million per year, are set to expire after the 2025 season, with Disney, Ion, CBS and Amazon as media partners. The new rights could be worth up to six times the league’s current rights, as the new deals give the WNBA the flexibility to bring in new partners. The league plans to sell two more rights packages in addition to those it already has deals for, and expects to bring in an additional $60 million per year in total from those additional deals.
That would help the WNBA capitalize on growing interest and media spending in the league and in women’s sports. The NWSL began a new media rights deal this year that is expected to bring in $240 million over four years. The WNBA’s future deals could exceed that amount each year, even surpassing Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s hopes for the league. She said earlier this year that she wanted to at least double the WNBA’s rights.
The WNBA will exceed that level. It also has some protection in place if the WNBA continues to thrive and its rights become undervalued. There is an agreement between the league and media partners to review rights agreements in good faith discussions after three years, which could revalue them to reflect the league’s growth.
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