The first full-time sports hire at Netflix is also the biggest hire yet at the new USA Sports.
Netflix host Elle Duncan has joined USA Sports as the host of its WNBA studio coverage, Richard Deitsch of Sports Business Journal reported Thursday. Duncan joined Netflix late last year after a long run with ESPN, where she hosted the 6 PM ET “SportsCenter” and served as the host of the network’s WNBA and women’s college basketball studio.
USA Network acquired WNBA rights while still part of Comcast as part of NBCUniversal’s NBA media rights deal. As a result of USA Network being spun off from Comcast into the independent entity Versant, it had to strike a separate deal with the league to retain and expand upon the rights it would have had with NBCU. Under its WNBA deal, USA will carry weekly doubleheaders throughout the regular season, plus playoff games and portions of the WNBA Finals in years when NBCU has the rights. The first of those years is this coming season.
Under her Netflix contract, Duncan has the right to negotiate separate agreements with other networks, so long as they do not conflict with her Netflix duties — which her agent told Deitsch last week will include hosting MLB Opening Night, the MLB Home Run Derby and contributing in some way the streamer’s NFL Christmas Day coverage. She will presumably have to take several weeks off from USA WNBA coverage in 2027 when Netflix airs the FIFA Women’s World Cup. It is not clear whether Duncan will take on further roles at USA or other companies.
Duncan is by far the highest-profile hire by USA Sports since it spun off from Comcast. Most of the company’s talent has been inherited from its prior relationship with NBCUniversal, part of a purposeful maintenance of the status quo that its president Matt Hong described on a recent edition of the Sports Media Watch Podcast. “We will not fix what isn’t broken. So whether it’s Rich Lerner and Steve Sands and Terry Gannon on Golf Channel, or it’s the team that you’re used to for Premier League on USA Network, they’re all coming over.”
But for the properties it never shared with NBCU — the WNBA and Pac-12 chief among them — it appears that USA intends to build a new roster out of outside talent. In addition to Duncan, the company previously hired Kate Scott as its lead WNBA voice, and Hong said that it will soon announce talent for its upcoming Pac-12 package.
