The WNBA is looking to capitalize on its recent success by expanding its regular season and playoffs.
On Thursday, the WNBA announced major changes to both its regular season and playoff structure for the 2025 season. Perhaps most notable of the changes is the league’s move to a best-of-seven format for the WNBA Finals from the best-of-five format the league has used since 2005.
The league also announced a change to how its First Round will be conducted. The best-of-three series will now take a 1-1-1 format that will see teams alternate hosting games. Currently, the better seed hosts the first two games with the worse seed hosting a Game 3 if necessary.
Along with adding games to the Finals and changing the First Round, the WNBA is also expanding its regular season for the second time since 2022. The 2025 season will see each team play 44 regular season games, up from 40 in each of the last two seasons. The move coincides with the WNBA adding its first of three announced expansion teams next season, the Golden State Valkyries.
“We are seeing an incredible demand for WNBA basketball, as reflected in the number of cities pursuing expansion franchises, fans attending games and engaging with our social and digital platforms in record fashion, and game broadcasts and streams being consumed like never before,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.
Of course, more games means more inventory for the league to sell its television partners. As it stands, the WNBA holds deals with four different media rights partners for the 2025 season, Disney/ESPN, Amazon, Paramount/CBS, and Scripps/Ion. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
Comcast/NBC gets into the mix in 2026 when the new set of NBA rights deals (which also includes the majority of the WNBA’s media rights) kicks in. That means ESPN, Amazon, and NBC are guaranteed a piece of the league through 2036, though the additional inventory will likely allow the WNBA to keep a fourth partner beyond next season as well.
“The incredible demand for WNBA basketball makes this the ideal time to increase the regular season to 44 games per team and expand the WNBA Finals,” Engelbert continued. In particular, the expanded Finals should keep the WNBA’s three main partners happy. Between 2026 and 2036, ESPN will broadcast five WNBA Finals, while NBC and Amazon will broadcast three a piece.
With the success of the league in 2024, expansion across the board makes sense. Once two more expansion franchises join in 2026, there will be even more inventory to go around. For now, the WNBA is showing an ability to be nimble, and take advantage of the momentum currently behind the league.
[WNBA]
