WNBA reaches 'monumental' 11-year media deal

The WNBA announced a new 11-year media rights deal Wednesday featuring partnerships with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and new rights holder NBCUniversal.

The deal is valued at about $2.2 billion, or $200 million per year, a source told ESPN, but future agreements with additional partners could bring the league’s overall media deals closer to $3 billion.

“Partnering with Disney, Amazon and NBCU marks a monumental chapter in WNBA history and clearly demonstrates the significant rise in value and the historic level of interest in women’s basketball,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “These agreements allow the league to continue to build a long-term and sustainable growth model for the future of women’s basketball and sports which will benefit WNBA players, teams and fans.”

The Athletic was the first to report the value of the deal.

According to a release, Disney — which owns the majority of ESPN — Amazon and NBCU will show more than 125 regular-season and playoff games each season, including a minimum of 25 regular-season games on Disney platforms, 50 on NBCU platforms and 30 on Prime Video. Disney will distribute games on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 and stream them on the company’s new direct-to-consumer service; NBCU will distribute them on NBC, USA Network and Peacock; and Amazon will distribute them on Prime Video.

Disney will distribute two first-round playoff series per year, with NBCU and Prime distributing one each, while semifinal and Finals series will rotate. Disney will telecast eight semifinals series and five Finals, and Prime and NBCU each will show seven semifinals and three Finals.

Disney will continue to air WNBA All-Star events and the WNBA draft, and Prime will still be home to the Commissioner’s Cup championship game.

The WNBA also currently has deals with CBS and ION, which upon renegotiation could yield at least $60 million in additional revenue and bring the league’s overall media deals to six times the total of its current deals.

According to a source, the figures for the new agreements do not include production costs or marketing commitments, which is the case for numbers associated with the media deals for the NWSL ($240 million over four years with four partners) and MLS ($2.5 billion over 10 years with Apple).

The partners also agreed to review and potentially reevaluate the rights fees to ensure appropriate value after three years, a source added.