New WNBA media rights deal is a huge step forward

Fresh off WNBA All-Star Weekend, the WNBA announced a new 11-year media rights deal on Wednesday. In one of the most monumental seasons in league history, the league continues to take advantage of the attention — but this time, it is in a media deal with the top companies.

The deal is valued at around $2.2 billion, sources tell ESPN. It would be $200 million annually with Disney, Amazon Prime, and NBCUniversal partnerships. Other additional partners could also bring the league's media deals closer to $3 billion in the future.

"Partnering with Disney, Amazon and NBCU marks a monumental chapter in WNBA history and clearly demonstrates the significant rise in value and the historic level of interest in women's basketball," WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. "These agreements allow the league to continue to build a long-term and sustainable growth model for the future of women's basketball and sports which will benefit WNBA players, teams and fans."

While this amount is a significant increase compared to the league's current deal, many are still wondering if this is a fair valuation for women's basketball, especially with the rise of popularity this season. The executive director of the WNBA players' union, Terri Carmichael Jackson, is leading the concern as she expressed it openly.

"We have wondered for months how the NBA would value the WNBA in its media rights deal,” she stated in a Washington Post statement. “With a reportedly $75 billion deal on the table, the league is in control of its own destiny. More precisely, the NBA controls the destiny of the WNBA.”

Since the WNBA launched in 1996, it has been 60 percent owned by the NBA. The WNBA's current media deal with Disney, Ion, CBS, and Amazon, which is worth $50 million each year, expires after next season.

Cheryl Miller also had something to say about the new deal before it was officially reported.

But the WNBA also still has deals with CBS and ION, which, if renegotiated, can yield at least $60 million more revenue and raise the league's media deals to six times the total of its current deals.

Viewership is up 183 percent from last season; the 2024 WNBA Draft drew 2.45 million viewers, which was five times as many as the previous year. The ESPN broadcast of Caitlin Clark's opening game had the highest viewership of a WNBA game on the network, and now this new deal can provide six times the WNBA's current media rights fees and might even increase player salaries.

So, while it may not be enough for some people to see, it's an improvement and another topic to celebrate in the WNBA community and women's sports.