CBS Sports is not only staying in the WNBA business, but growing its presence in a league that will soon have considerably more inventory.
CBS parent company Paramount announced Wednesday that it has reached a multi-year media rights extension with the WNBA, continuing a relationship that began in 2019. Paramount will be the sixth separate company with a national WNBA rights package, joining the returning Disney, Amazon and Scripps and newcomers NBCUniversal and Versant.
WNBA games will now air on three of the “Big Four” broadcast networks, CBS, ABC and NBC.
Under the new deal, all games will air on the CBS broadcast network and Paramount+, with no more inventory carried on CBS Sports Network. The CBS schedule expands to 20 games this season, by a wide margin the most WNBA games ever on any of the major broadcast networks.
There will now be as many WNBA regular season games on CBS as there are NBA games on ABC and Major League Baseball games on NBC. CBS alone gives the WNBA more broadcast TV exposure during its regular season than the NHL, and that is before adding the league’s two other over-the-air partners.
The expanded CBS schedule comes as the league will have even more inventory in the coming years. In addition to the five new expansion teams that will be debuting between now and 2030, the new WNBA collective bargaining agreement — which has now been ratified by both the league and players union — allows the league to expand its schedule to as many as 50 regular season games per team next season and as many as 52 in 2029.
The season is also expected to run later, according to documents obtained by Alexa Philippou of ESPN, with the last possible end date shifting from October 31 to November 21 (and November 30 in the Olympic year of 2028). While CBS does not have WNBA playoff rights, the later finish could present the opportunity for the network to air WNBA games adjacent to NFL coverage in September or early October, as it has done for the NWSL (and as is occasionally done for properties ranging from the NHRA to NWSL).
Notably, the WNBA has not modified its earliest possible start, which remains April 1, ruling out the possibility that the league could start its season as early as April — a move that would have conflicted with the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. (The league did move up the date players are required to report to training camp from May 1 to April 15, a move that could conflict with the new Project B barnstorming tour.)
Coming just over a month before the new season is set to begin, the WNBA-CBS agreement was announced significantly later than any of the league’s other independently-negotiated deals — six months after the league announced its new deal with Versant and nine after it announced an extension with Scripps. (The WNBA’s three other rights deals, with Disney, Amazon and NBCU, were negotiated as part of the NBA media rights agreement that was announced more than two years ago.)
