WNBA Playoffs Face ESPN Fall Crunch For Final Time

The next four weeks will be a sprint to crown a WNBA champion. 

In that window, ESPN—which has the league’s exclusive playoff broadcast rights for the last time this season—is tasked with slotting games during one of the busiest parts of the sports calendar. College football, where ESPN holds extensive rights, has just started, and MLB is in the stretch run to the playoffs. In about two and a half weeks the NBA and NHL will return to action. By then, the WNBA Finals will be underway. 

All four of the WNBA’s first-round Game 1 matchups were played on Sunday across ESPN platforms, beginning with the Minnesota Lynx against the Golden State Valkyries at 1 p.m. on the network’s main channel. Three of the four games were blowouts, except for one: the New York Liberty’s overtime win over the Phoenix Mercury. The games were largely played in the heart of the NFL’s afternoon window, but that’s where ESPN has openings in the late summer and early fall.

The Liberty–Mercury game, slotted for 5 p.m. ET, ended up extending about 10 minutes into ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball game  between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. 

The first pitch of that game was broadcast on ESPN2. An ESPN spokesperson told Front Office Sports, “it’s a conditions call,” meaning an executive in programming made a decision to prioritize allowing the WNBA playoff game to conclude instead of switching it to ESPN2. 

By about 7:20, the Yankees and Red Sox had been moved to the main channel. 

Last year, players lamented the condensed playoff schedule which began on Sept. 22 and concluded with the Liberty’s Game 5 Finals win over the Lynx on October 20. (The playoffs started late last year because of the Olympics.)

This season, the schedule was moved up by just a few days, but the Finals have been extended from a best-of-five series to best-of-seven. 

Viewership for the slate of Game 1s on Sunday won’t be released until Tuesday, though three blowouts and the timing with the NFL could mean underwhelming numbers.

The playoff schedule will likely see some flexibility in 2026 when the WNBA’s new $2.2 billion media rights deal kicks in. ESPN has been the exclusive playoff broadcaster of the WNBA playoffs since 2003, but next year the postseason will be shared between ESPN, Amazon, and NBCUniversal. 

The league’s new deal gives ESPN two first-round series and NBCU and Amazon one series each. The semifinals and Finals will rotate between ESPN, NBCU, and Amazon over the 11-year deal. 

ESPN’s crunch continues this week. After Game 2 ESPN doubleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday, any necessary Game 3s played on Thursday or Friday will be on to ESPN2, as ESPN has a full college football slate.