The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) announced that it has a multi-year contract with CBS Sports for the network to televise live WNBA games starting in the 2019 season, according to the league’s website.
“Through our partnership with CBS Sports Network, the WNBA is joining an elite lineup of premium sports programming,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “We thank CBS Sports for making such a meaningful commitment to women’s basketball and for providing another platform to showcase the world-class athletes of the WNBA.”
There will be 40 live, nationally-televised WNBA games in prime time and on weekends on the network, with the first game on May 25 when the Minnesota Lynx take on the Chicago Sky. The league is entering its 23rd season.
“We are truly excited to partner with the WNBA, bringing the country’s premier women’s sports league to CBS Sports Network. This partnership is one of the biggest and most impactful women’s sports programming arrangements ever at CBS Sports, offering national exposure of 40 games per year,” said Sean McManus, Chairman, CBS Sports.
“This agreement provides great live content throughout the summer in primetime and on weekends, and aligns two great brands in the WNBA and CBS Sports. We look forward to working with the WNBA for many years to come.”
There is nothing major about CBS Sports.
Correct, since the deal is with CBS Sports Network rather than CBS proper. CBSSN is primarily a premium-cable or streaming service. The over-the-air networks still get most of the eyeballs for live sporting events.
This may actually give the WNBA access to fewer fans than it had with its ESPN deal.
I believe this is in addition to the ESPN/ABC deal. So more exposure for the league. More money and less need for our best players to play overseas eventually
Hey That is a rather key detail! Okay, so the games are NOT on CBS, but on an obscure cable station.
They still won’t make enough to make a profit.
Lol. Women’s sports….
If the WNBA is going to be on Saturday nights now, I will probably have to watch. This has not always gone well in the past. Fortunately the sport now features solid-colored unis, not those bush-league jobs they used to have that all looked the same. Unfortunately, there is no player number on the shirt front, but there is FOUR spaces for advertising. I suspect these advertisers wanted less clutter around their messages– not that the crayon-jockeys at Nike gave up their ugly obsession with contrasting shoulder color.
People who complained about all the advertising overwhelming the team logos were given the solution they did not want: the player number was removed instead!
link to espn.com
Is this part of the NBA deal where they force the network to also sign the WNBA or is this different?
im a fan of girls dunking