The WNBA’s massive media rights win, explained — Lynne Roberts talks Utah

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At the time, the WNBA had set an internal goal of $100 million out of its new deal. Fast forward two years, and much has happened — the WNBA no longer resides in the same ratings neighborhood it once did, for instance. The market for women’s sports properties has grown significantly, though due to reasons, the NWSL and especially the NCAA women’s tournament both received sharp discounts relative to their ratings parity, and in many cases superiority, to men’s events.

Even so, the reported WNBA rights deal — a $200 million annual valuation, according to Mike Vorkunov — carries with it the kind of win that is undeniable, only limited by the very structure of ownership the WNBA has in place. Cathy Engelbert has delivered here.

Let’s start with some of the particulars that make the pact so appealing for the WNBA. For one thing, the three broadcast partners will be ESPN (a large cable outlet that includes the ability to broadcast on ABC), NBC, itself a broadcast channel, and Amazon. The tradeoff MLS made in its deal with Apple TV+ was fairly simple: in exchange for more money and a single destination, losing bandwidth on bigger, traditional outlets was the price worth paying.

The WNBA didn’t make that trade — or if it did, it didn’t cost them a significant amount of money relative to the MLS deal. Nor is this the ceiling for the deal! As Vorkunov reports: “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.”

At $60 million for those deals, we’re looking at a larger payday for the WNBA than even MLS got, without the tradeoffs of outlet bandwidth or having to absorb production costs.

The only real caveat here is the length of the deal. 11 years is a long time — at 11 years, the concern is that the WNBA’s trajectory could make this look like a bargain relatively quickly, something multiple league executives told me, with varying levels of concern. There’s language in the deal that allows for the league and its partners to revisit the agreement in three years, but one source told me the language is “very soft” and generally, such a stipulation without any enforcement component won’t lead to any real ability by the league to change it.

But much as I, like many of you, hope and believe the trajectory of women’s basketball will remain on this path, there is a measure of security here, too: the WNBA will have operating capital unlike it ever has through 2035, or the latter half of Donald Trump’s fifth term. (See? Some security about the future right now isn’t purely a downside play. Excited there’s a Toronto market to cover the WNBA from!)

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So this is a huge win — for the league as a whole. It’s somewhat less of a win for WNBA-specific team owners. And it could be even less significant still for the league’s players.

As we’ve previously discussed here, WNBA team owners don’t own 100 percent of the league, as is customary in other circuits, including NWSL. For the WNBA’s first 25 years, the NBA’s owners controlled 50 percent of the league’s stake, and following the capital raise which closed in early 2022, selling roughly 16 percent of the league for $75 million — a number that looks quite small here, 2.5 years later — the owners of WNBA teams controlled about 42 percent of the total league revenue. (It’s more, since some of the WNBA owners are also NBA owners, but their WNBA team ownership stakes, collectively, mean about 42 percent of the league.)

What that means is that financial windfalls for WNBA team owners, as the kids say, “hit different.” (Editor’s note: I am being told by my children that the kids absolutely do NOT say that.) $200 million isn’t $200 million — it is more like $84 million. That’s still significant growth over what the league had been receiving from ESPN, for instance, and even well beyond what the league was receiving from all of its current partners. But it isn’t $200 million into the pockets of the folks who are going to be paying players and, more crucially, negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement.

Which brings me to the WNBPA. I asked the PA this morning what Terri Jackson’s reaction to the media rights deal report is, and her spokesperson emailed this response, which has since been sent to other publications as well:

“We have wondered for months how the NBA would value the WNBA in its media rights deal. 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. We look forward to learning how the NBA arrived at a $200 million valuation—if initial reports are accurate or even close. Neither the NBA nor the WNBA can deny that in the last few years, we have seen unprecedented growth across all metrics, the players continue to demonstrate their commitment to building the brand, and that the fans keep showing up. There is no excuse to undervalue the WNBA again.”

Never one to miss an opportunity, Jackson and the WNBPA have seen the same reports we all have for months, that the NBA was negotiating the rights deal with the WNBA as part of it. Engelbert has been out front and public about it, she has talked up the value of the rights while setting expectations that ultimately, the league was able to vault over. This was always going to be the primary pot of money from which the players would be paid, and if Jackson has spoken publicly about the need for these rights to be higher in any public forum prior to today, once the cake had been baked, I was unable to find it.

Nor is this statement even on the PA’s Twitter account, which has more retweets of Jewell Loyd’s mom celebrating Jewell’s pickleball win (1) than posts about the value of the media rights deal as it was being negotiated (0). The same is true on Instagram, where the PA did weigh in on how the video game NBA2K portrayed WNBA players but not WNBA media rights value.

While the players also indicated, months ago, that they are likely to opt out of the current CBA following the 2024 season, triggering an early end to the CBA following the 2025 season, there’s been no clear, consistent messaging on either the idea that the players want a 50-50 split of revenue, nor today, as the new financial windfall became public, that the players whose talent and showmanship have built the audience the league’s media partners are paying for should be receiving more money.

The revenue split comments Kelsey Plum made back in 2022 were clear, concise, and trenchant.

“We’re not asking to get paid what the men get paid,” Plum said on something called The Residency Podcast, which I have not heard of and hasn’t published a new episode since May 2023. “We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared.”

The media, when it covers what players think, repeatedly returns to this quote from more than two years ago, because the message simply isn’t repeated from leaders of the WNBPA, least of all its executive director. Not even on the day a financial windfall is made public. I’ve been told by a person familiar with the PA’s messaging strategy that the goal is to be “selectively strategic”.

Meanwhile, the WNBA has telegraphed its position in the upcoming negotiations: there’s some more money, but it’s being spent — for instance, on charter flights. This is not an argument without substance. It is also the stuff of labor negotiations in other leagues, but never the WNBA. This is a new kind of fight. There are spoils to divvy up. There’s public sentiment to marshal in support of one side or the other. A single documentary seen on whatever the hell Tubi is won’t cut it.

And Cathy Engelbert, who can take a significant amount of credit for navigating the league into position to cash in on the WNBA’s new popularity, has also positioned the league for the coming battle over who gets how much of that cash. Right now, that is a one-sided affair. That’ll make the 42 percent go a lot further — for the owners.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the timing of the WNBA’s capital raise.

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