There is absolutely no denying that women’s sports, particularly the WNBA, have experienced unprecedented global growth in recent years. This athletic movement has rapidly transformed from a fringe interest into a prime-time television staple across major broadcasting networks. However, multiple prominent sports analysts believe society still has a long way to go before declaring total victory for female athletes. Current statistical levels regarding the mainstream media coverage of women’s sports remain incredibly low.

“When I started working in the WNBA in 2018, it was less than 4%, interesting to see some updated numbers. Progress, but a long way to go,” stated Eli Horowitz, the assistant GM for the expansion Toronto Tempo franchise.

Horowitz’s poignant reaction followed a recent Sports Business Journal breakdown detailing the massive discrepancies in modern sports media. The sobering SBJ report heavily relied on research from Communication and Sport to highlight exactly where television newsrooms are severely failing female athletes.

The comprehensive study revealed that airtime for women’s sports on televised news and highlights programs continues to hover below 10 percent. Mainstream networks persistently dedicate their prime resources and premier broadcast windows entirely to men’s marquee leagues. Despite surging on-court popularity, women’s sports accounted for a scant 9.2% of televised highlight shows, virtually unchanged from 8.7% back in 1999. Digital platforms initially appeared to offer a slightly brighter alternative until researchers removed niche, player-specific accounts from the complex equation.

While women’s sports captured 21.7% of coverage in daily newsletters and 28.2% across social media, those shares plummeted on traditional platforms. Legacy media newsletters allocated a modest 8.8% of their content to female athletes, with traditional social feeds hovering at just 15.0%.

Fortunately, ESPN finally broke a historic barrier by averaging 12.5% coverage across three sampling windows, marking its first double-digit performance since 1999. Conversely, CBS Sports HQ allocated a scant 3% of its airtime, highlighting the massive disparities that the WNBA continues to fiercely combat.

WNBA Remains An Outlier When It Comes To Coverage And Finances

While general women’s sports coverage grows at a painfully slow pace, the WNBA is currently operating in an entirely different financial stratosphere. The league officially signed its biggest TV rights deal in 2024, initially worth an impressive $2.2 billion over eleven years. New broadcasting pacts with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon have already pushed that total media rights package well past the massive $3 billion threshold. This astronomical financial surge perfectly aligns with recent franchise valuations that surprisingly outpace every other major sports league in North America.

According to fresh 2026 data from Sportico, the WNBA currently boasts a staggering average value-to-revenue multiple of 13.6x. This impressive multiple edges out the NBA (13.5x) and safely surpasses the NFL (12.7x) in that specific financial growth metric. The league’s average franchise valuation has exploded to $427 million against $31.5 million in annual revenue. This incredible financial momentum has been massively accelerated by a new generation of transcendent superstars completely rewriting the sport’s broadcast history.

Since being selected first overall in the 2024 draft, Caitlin Clark has played a pivotal role in popularizing the entire league. Clark and the Indiana Fever have repeatedly shattered historic network viewership marks across CBS, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, and NBC this season. The August 24 matchup between the Fever and the Chicago Sky delivered a massive milestone, averaging 3.31 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. That broadcast instantly became the most-watched regular-season WNBA contest since the league’s legendary inaugural campaign in 1997.

That massive August audience only trailed historic opening-weekend telecasts featuring the New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks (5.04 million peak viewers) and the Charlotte Sting against the Phoenix Mercury (3.59 million). With Clark serving as the league’s undisputed ratings engine, the WNBA has effectively cemented its status as a television juggernaut. This spectacular growth is only expected to continue as the league prepares to expand to 50 regular-season games next season alongside its ongoing push for 18 total teams by 2030.