WNBA's media rights deals set league up to receive $2.2 billion over next 11 years: Sources

The WNBA’s next national media rights package has come into shape. The league is set to receive roughly $2.2 billion over the next 11 years in rights fees in its new deals — an average of $200 million a year — with an opening to earn more over that period, according to league sources briefed on the contracts.

The NBA negotiated the WNBA’s new deals during its just-completed rights talks, where it reached an agreement with Disney, NBC and Amazon on an 11-year, approximately $75 billion set of contracts. The WNBA’s national media rights agreements are with those companies as well; ESPN, NBC and Amazon will all have their own WNBA packages.

The NBA’s board of governors approved those media rights deals Tuesday but they are not yet official since Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, maintains that it has matching rights for a NBA rights package but has not yet decided whether to exercise them.

The WNBA’s current media deals, valued at roughly $50 million annually, are set to expire after the 2025 season, with Disney, Ion, CBS and Amazon as its media partners. The new rights fees could have as much as six times multiple of the league’s current media rights fees since the new deals leave room for the WNBA to bring in new partners. The league anticipates it will sell two other rights packages in addition to the ones it has already made agreements for, and projects to bring in another $60 million annually in total in those additional deals.



https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5642386/2024/07/16/wnba-media-rights-deal-negotiations/