WNBA strikes TV deal with new broadcast partner for 2023, sees signals for

With demand for women’s basketball at record highs and the next WNBA season just a month away, the league will start its 27th season with a new television deal in place that will create a dedicated night for the W all unto itself.

The WNBA will air on the Ion Television network Friday nights this season as part of a new multiyear contract signed this month. This provides the WNBA with another national TV deal and allows it to build a consistent national window for its games. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the contract will not run past the 2025 season, when the league’s current TV rights deal with ESPN/ABC expires.

The agreement with the E.W. Scripps Company will air games after the opening weekend, starting May 26. The network will air at least one, and sometimes multiple, games each Friday. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert hopes this will create appointment viewing for the league, akin to how the NBA has become synonymous with Thursday nights on TNT.

“It just shows the demand is high for W games, and Scripps really recognized that,” Engelbert said in an interview with The Athletic. “I think it’s just another sign and signal that we’ve been looking for about our growth, and it’s great to see a top organization like Scripps step up here.”

This is a first step into national sports rights for Scripps. It launched its sports division in December and sought a way to add sports rights to its broadcast network. Scripps CEO Adam Symson said in a phone call that Ion is the fifth-largest network in the country, ahead of The CW. He said Ion has 79 million paid subscribers and reaches 103 million homes through a connected TV.

Scripps is attempting to take advantage of the growing interest in women’s sports and has made the WNBA a central broadcast partner. Asked why he wanted to sign the WNBA, Symson was not short on reasons.

“Because I think it’s time for women’s sports to be showcased in a way that its fans deserve,” he told The Athletic. “It’s time for the league, the owners and the players to have a platform where they can showcase the athleticism and the drama that is the WNBA. Because more than half of the American audience is female, and it’s time for them to be able to see on television themselves competing at the highest level.

“Economically, we’ve got, obviously, that nice intersection with the demos that we serve on all of the platforms that we serve, but we’re at a moment now where we can get into a partnership with a sport and a league that’s looking to us like it’s in a hockey stick growth mode versus the opposite.”

Ion will build a whole night around the league, which the network will call “WNBA Friday Night Spotlight on ION.” It will air a pre-game show and have a halftime show, Symson said, though the WNBA will be responsible for its production and hiring the talent.

The format, Symson said, was based on how the NFL orchestrates its national windows on Sunday…