The WNBA partnership with Scripps Sports is continuing. The league and the company jointly announced Friday that they’ve reached a multi-year extension of their current rights deal, oriented around a Friday night package of games on Scripps’ ION broadcast TV network.
Soon after parent The E.W. Scripps Company officially launched a Scripps Sports division in December 2022, both ION and the WNBA emerged as cornerstones of the division’s national strategy. Scripps Sports’ first national deal was with that league, initially covering 15 Friday night games in 2023 that were not previously set for national TV. Strong ratings numbers there led to that deal continuing and expanding, covering 50 games this year, and now it’s set for more years to come. Here’s more from a WNBA/Scripps release:
ION, one of the most-watched networks on television, is available on pay TV, connected TV, free ad-supported streaming platforms and over-the-air in more than 128 million homes. This season, ION is broadcasting the most regular season games, 50 in total, as part of its WNBA Friday Night Spotlight series. The lineup also includes the WNBA on ION Studio Show, which is the first weekly game broadcast studio show dedicated exclusively to WNBA game coverage.
This new agreement comes on the heels of a 2024 season where average viewership for the State Farm® WNBA Friday Night Spotlight increased by 133% year over year and attracted more than 23 million unique viewers across games and wrap shows.
“The WNBA’s partnership with Scripps has already delivered great results in expanding the league’s reach and visibility,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “This new multi-year agreement reflects the growing excitement surrounding the league and the rising demand for WNBA games. Through Scripps’ ION Network Friday Night doubleheaders, we will continue to showcase the world-class talent of WNBA athletes to even more fans nationwide.”
“Since 2023, the WNBA Friday Night Spotlight on ION has enhanced the accessibility and reach of WNBA games for fans nationwide,” said Adam Symson, Scripps president and CEO. “Our robust partnership with the league has flourished, and we are thrilled to solidify ION’s status as the premier Friday night destination for WNBA action for years to come.”
As WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert noted last month, the league signed its main 11-year national deals with Disney (ESPN/ABC), NBC, and Amazon last year, but left open “tranche two” windows for other networks. Engelbert told Bill Simmons there the league picked up $200 million in average annual value on those three main deals, and was hoping to add another $60 million each year from subsequent packages. Financials of this Scripps deal haven’t yet been reported, but with this deal being announced relatively early (the current previous partnership still runs through this season), it seems likely the WNBA was happy with Scripps’ extension offer.
For their part, Scripps has made no secret of the value they see in the WNBA. In December 2023, Scripps Sports CEO Brian Lawlor told Awful Announcing he was ecstatic at how quickly fans gravitated to WNBA games on ION, a channel that had not previously been well-known for sports:
“We were thrilled with how that came together. Ideally, it would not be five weeks, in a perfect world, it would be five months, but we were five weeks before the beginning of the season, and we had a solution that allowed us to quickly get into sports on ION, which was certainly a goal of ours and an opportunity to create a big visible franchise with the WNBA. So I think everyone agreed that it was a tremendous opportunity.
“…We were amazed at how quickly fans found the WNBA on ION, considering that ION had never been a place for sports before. We realized the challenge of trying to establish ION as a place for sports. But with that consistency, with a significant marketing effort, with a partnership with the league, we were very successful in our ratings.”
And Lawlor has built on those comments since then. He told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic in March that “our long-term expectation is we are going to be the home for the WNBA across the entire country for every game on Fridays.” Now, under this extension, that’s set to be the case for at least several more years.
