With 22 games this season, the production team looks forward to tweaking and enhancing the coverage
After 8,660 days off the air, the WNBA returned to NBC yesterday with a star-studded Aces-Dream and Fever-Storm doubleheader that also marked the league's debut on Peacock and NBCSN. For the first time since Game 2 of the WNBA Finals, the league was back on NBC, and SVP/Coordinating Producer Betsy Riley and company are focused on putting their own stamp on WNBA coverage for the remainder of NBC's 22-game package this season.
In setting a path for the future, Riley took a moment to reflect on the past and NBC's rich WNBA roots. Prior to the tip-off on NBC, she pulled tape from the league's first-ever broadcast: a Liberty-Sparks matchup from June 22, 1997, that aired on NBC.
Back then as we welcomed our audience to that inaugural game, she recounts, naturally, we explained what this [league] was and intended to be. Today, this sports property needs no explanation. It stands on its own.
Our production philosophy is pretty simple, she continues. We intend to keep the sport at the center of everything we do. Around that, we'll tell great stories about the characters and aspire to make the couch the very best seat in the house.
Year 1 of 11: NBC's Long Game with the W
NBC Sports' 22-game WNBA schedule - the first in an 11-year media-rights deal - comprises seven games on NBC/Peacock and 15 on Peacock/NBCSN. NBC Sports' WNBA slate - which features appearances by all 15 teams and the league's biggest stars: Caitlin Clark, A'ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers, Napheesa Collier, Sabrina Ionescu, Angel Reese, Breanna Stewart, and Azzi Fudd - will consist of two marquee broadcast windows each week. WNBA Gametime broadcasts will primarily be Monday nights in primetime (with a handful of Saturday and Sunday afternoons/evenings mixed in); Sunday Night Basketball will debut on July 12.
It is not lost on us, says Kim Titone, senior director, NBA Operations, NBC Sports, that the first-ever WNBA game aired on NBC and now it's the 30th-anniversary season and we get to be a part of bringing it back to NBC. There is incredible momentum going into this year, and we are excited to build on that and do anything we can to help grow the audience.
In addition to regular-season games, the 2026 WNBA Semi-Finals and WNBA Finals will be carried across NBC, Peacock, and NBCSN.
It's incredibly exciting and motivating to have the opportunity to cover the Finals from the jump in year one, says Riley. That is something we are very much looking forward to, and it is front of mind. We will go into the season with the mindset of tinkering. We want to tinker and find the best way to cover the game, the best way to present the W this season. And we intend to tinker all the way up until the fall and the Finals so that we're getting it right for our audience.
From an operations perspective, the planning and preparation for the WNBA began in the summer and ramped up once Titone and her team were on the other side of Legendary February and the NBA All-Star Game.
Our primary goal is to celebrate what makes the WNBA special and unique, says Titone. That is true for both our coverage and our operational-support plan. The hope is that what we're building for year one is able to sustain and evolve as we continue through this long-term partnership.
Borrowing From the NBA Playbook - Without Copying It
Not surprisingly, NBC's WNBA productions will draw heavily from the NBA on NBC blueprint the technical and operations teams began building out last summer. Many of the same workflows and standard operating procedures for the NBA season will be used on WNBA since the core technical and operations teams have been working on both properties and transferring learnings from one league to the other over the past year.
The NBA season has been the main foundation of our WNBA technical planning, which includes using similar documentation and practices when preparing for a game, says Samantha Ruby, remote technical manager, NBC Sports. Roughly half the NBA venues are also used for WNBA teams, and it has been incredibly helpful already having relationships with the contacts at those venues and knowing the right questions to ask for those we haven't been to yet.
Although many of the venues may be familiar, NBC's operations team is also cognizant that the WNBA season will represent a very different set of logistics.
We will be taking all those [NBA] learnings into the WNBA while never making any assumptions that things will necessarily translate one for one, says Titone. Even though there are many shared venues, for example, there are different building contacts and footprints when it is a WNBA game versus an NBA game. As we approach each game, we are starting fresh even if it's a building we've been to many times over during the NBA season.
Riley cites the graphics package as a prime example of how NBC will draw inspiration from its NBA coverage. Foundationally, the WNBA on NBC graphics package is nearly identical to the NBA on NBC's.From the beginning, Senior Art Director Chad Hudson and his team designed it as a pro-basketball package for both the NBA and the WNBA.
That package puts the players and their faces at the center, Riley says. It celebrates the team, the team colors, the cities. Even if that's the same wrapping paper that you see on the NBA, it feels totally different for the W. Sometimes, there are through lines, and there are things that are the same, but, when you're intent on leaning into these players and these teams, it automatically has a different vibe and feels different
I think, she continues, where it makes sense for us to lean into and leverage either our NBA identity or our broader sports identity, like S
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With 22 games this season, the production team looks forward to tweaking and enhancing the coverage
