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Napheesa Collier, #24 of the Minnesota Lynx, scores the winning basket in the game against the New York Liberty in Game 1 of the 2024 WNBA Finals at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on October 10, 2024.
Nathaniel S. Butler | National Basketball Association | Getty Images
Discovery Warner Bros. ensures that professional basketball remains on TNT Sports.
Unparalleled, the new and upcoming professional women’s basketball league has signed an exclusive, multi-year media rights deal to broadcast its games on TNT and truTV, as well as the Max streaming platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The three-on-three league was co-founded earlier this year by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty and Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx as the popularity of women’s sports — basketball in particular — rises.
The WNBA received a boost this season from rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese – with big increases in regular season attendance and viewership. This continued through the playoffs and most recently the finals, which featured Collier and Stewart. It even translated into changes to next year’s WNBA season, which will go from 40 games to 44 games, and its final series from five games to seven games.
Unrivaled will operate in a new format and in the months leading up to the WNBA season, giving athletes another option to play basketball in the United States during the offseason, rather than having to play overseas. It will also give players equity in the new league and provide contract opportunities that will offer the highest average salary in the history of the women’s professional sports league.
Reese and other WNBA greats have confirmed they will play in the new league, alongside Stewart and Collier.
Beginning January 17, more than 45 prime-time regular season games will be broadcast on TNT Sports platforms throughout the season. The games will be shown on TNT Sports platforms three nights per week, including two games per week on TNT on Mondays and Fridays, and additional broadcasts on truTV on Saturdays, according to the release.
Unmatched highlights and other content will also be available on other TNT platforms such as Bleacher Report and House of Highlights.
Unlike other sports leagues, Unrivaled’s games will be broadcast only on TNT Sports rather than multiple partners.
“I think consistency is key for us. If you build a consistent house, fans know where to go,” said Alex Bazzell, president of Unrivaled. “The second thing is you want to partner with someone who wants to tell the story outside of games and help move it forward. So having Bleacher Report and House of Highlights… is very valuable to us.”
Increased interest in the WNBA has led to the league’s latest media rights deal being valued at $2.2 billion for 11 seasons, CNBC previously reported. The WNBA media rights deal is negotiated as part of the NBA deal.
The NBA’s recent 11-year, $77 billion media rights deal — which begins during the 2025-2026 season — with Amazon, Disney’s ESPN and Comcast’s NBCUniversal ended a nearly 40-year relationship with Turner Sports from Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Discovery sued the NBA to try to retain its rights.
The media rights deal with Unrivivaled gives Turner Sports the ability to keep basketball on the air if it doesn’t win its lawsuit.
Unrivaled and TNT Sports will partner with Mediapro North America for audio and television production.
Star broadcaster and NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley recently said he would not leave TNT Sports even if the company did not own NBA media rights in the future. Barkley is part of TNT Sports’ popular “Inside the NBA” program.
TNT Sports will develop pregame, postgame and other in-studio content, but specific talent has not yet been chosen, spokespeople for Turner and Unrivaled said.
TNT Sports recently bolstered its roster — which already includes Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League — with college football playoff games and the French Open, among other sports.
A list of star investors
The new league has a nice list of investors, which will now also include TNT Sports.
In Wednesday’s announcement, Unrivaled said it had “maintained financial stability and security for all players and stakeholders until at least 2028.”
When Unrivaled was announced earlier this year, it had just closed a seed fundraising round and its investors included media executives such as former ESPN chairman John Skipper, former Turner chairman David Levy and the former CEO of Warner Bros. Ann Sarnoff. Investors also included athletes like former NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony and others who invested through the venture capital firm led by Alex Morgan, the recently retired star and captain of the United States women’s national soccer team.
Levy, who invested through his Horizon Sports & Experiences, and Skipper led the media rights discussions.
TNT Sports has also agreed to invest an undisclosed amount in Unrivaled’s latest funding round, which is expected to close in the coming weeks.
The investment is part of the interest of the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav to enter into sports deals that include ownership of intellectual property, which was previously reported by CNBC.