The WNBA’s next national media rights deal is taking shape, with the league slated to receive about $2.2 billion in rights fees over the next 11 years, an average of $200 million per year, with room to make more over that time, according to a league source briefed on the deal.
The NBA negotiated new contracts for the WNBA during the recently concluded rights negotiations, reaching 11-year, roughly $75 billion deals with Disney, NBC and Amazon. The WNBA’s national media rights deals were also signed with those companies, and ESPN, NBC and Amazon will each have their own WNBA packages.
The NBA Board of Governors approved those media rights deals on Tuesday, but they’re not yet official as TNT’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, claims it has rights comparable to the NBA’s rights package but has not yet decided whether to exercise them.
The WNBA’s current media contracts, worth about $50 million per year, are with Disney, Aeon, CBS and Amazon and are set to expire after the 2025 season. The new contract allows room for the WNBA to acquire new partners, so the new rights fees could be as much as six times the league’s current media rights fee. The league is looking to sell two additional rights packages on top of the ones it already has, bringing in a total of $60 million per year from those additional deals.
That would allow the WNBA to ride a wave of increased interest and media spending for the league and women’s sports overall. The NWSL began a new media-rights deal this year that’s set to pay it $240 million over four years. The WNBA’s next contract could exceed that figure annually and even surpass Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s expectations for the league. Engelbert said earlier this year that she wants to at least double the WNBA’s rights fees.
The WNBA will surpass that. It also has some built-in protections in case the WNBA continues to thrive and the rights become undervalued. There is an agreement between the league and its media partners to negotiate in good faith and revisit the rights contracts after three years, potentially resetting the rights price to reflect the league’s growth.
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