WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in April that she wanted the league to double its current national media rights fees, but she actually set her goal too low.
Current national media contracts average about $50 million per year through the 2025 season. The WNBA’s new deals with ESPN, Amazon and NBC approved on Tuesday will give the league about $2.2 billion over the next 11 years, an average of $200 million per year, with the potential for even bigger lucrative deals, The Athletic reported.
Call it part of the Caitlin Clark effect. Engelbert made the comments on the eve of the league’s draft, in which the Indiana Fever selected the Iowa college phenom with the No. 1 pick, predicting a surge in the WNBA’s popularity.
The WNBA partnered with the NBA, which negotiated the contracts as part of its own rights negotiations, and struck deals with Disney, NBC and Amazon worth about $75 billion over 11 years. The NBA’s Board of Governors approved the new terms, but they are still under review.
The WNBA’s current media partners are Disney, Aeon, CBS and Amazon. In addition to its upcoming deal, The Athletic reported that the WNBA is negotiating two other rights packages with new partners that could bring in a total of $60 million per year.
The new total would pay the WNBA more than six times its current compensation, and the league and its media partners have also agreed to revisit their rights agreements in three years to gauge their value to the league’s growth, The Athletic reported.
–Field Level Media
