CNBC’s stock tickers are making room for basketball on Wednesday nights.
According to Alex Sherman, the business news network will simulcast 11 WNBA games this season as part of Versant’s media rights deal with the league, starting with defending champion Las Vegas Aces hosting the Phoenix Mercury at 10 p.m. ET on Wednesday. That game closes out a doubleheader that opens at 8 p.m. on USA Network with the New York Liberty vs. Chicago Sky.
USA Network remains the primary home for the package Versant signed with the WNBA last September, airing at least 50 games annually, built around Wednesday-night doubleheaders. CNBC has carried the occasional Olympic event and golf broadcast over the years, but nothing approaching a weekly game commitment like this.
The simulcast exists to solve a scheduling problem, with USA Sports president Matt Hong telling CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that doubleheaders can run long, and that putting the second game on CNBC gives fans somewhere to go without missing the end of the first.
Wednesday also doubles Sophie Cunningham’s first appearance as a USA Sports contributor, with studio hits scheduled on both USA Network and CNBC throughout the doubleheader. The Indiana Fever guard signed on with USA Sports back in April. As Danielle Lerner of USA Today reported this month, USA Sports executive producer Jeff Behnke explained the network’s thinking behind the hire: “She says what’s on her mind, and she is also really passionate about the game of basketball.”
Versant has been negotiating its own carriage deals since splitting off from NBCUniversal, and CEO Mark Lazarus has said it would chase sports rights that “drive distribution, diversify ad sales and have a value,” rather than bid on tier-one packages like the NFL. Hong has signed five new, expanded, or extended rights deals since the spinoff was first announced, adding to Versant’s sports slate, which already includes NASCAR, the PGA Tour, LPGA, and Pac-12 football and basketball. (CNBC, MS NOW, E!, SyFy, and Oxygen all fall under that same Versant umbrella now, alongside digital properties like Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, and GolfNow.)
CNBC’s 11 games probably won’t register as much of a ratings story on their own, but they fold into a larger bet Versant has already placed on USA Network’s Monday and Wednesday windows, which the company has set aside specifically for women’s sports. Variety’s Cynthia Littleton detailed the strategy after talking with USA Sports anchor Elle Duncan and Lazarus himself: the goal is to make those two nights as much of a weekly destination as NBC built Sunday Night Football into for the NFL, with fans tuning in because of the night and the network as much as the particular matchup.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.