WNBA on NBC

On June 27, 1996, NBC Sports was announced as the WNBA's first national broadcaster.^[11] The WNBA soon also had television deals in place with the Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation joint venture channels, ESPN and Lifetime Television Network, respectively. At the time, NBC didn't pay television rights fees^[12][13] to the league's teams. A more rock-oriented variant^[14] of John Tesh's theme, "Roundball Rock" introduced by NBC to coincide with the debut of the WNBA.

NBC^[15] nationally televised the first^[16] WNBA game on June 21, 1997. The game featured the New York Liberty facing the Los Angeles Sparks^[17] in Los Angeles. For NBC's final season with the WNBA in 2002,^[18] they again began their season's worth of coverage on Memorial Day weekend^[19] with the Liberty^[20] and Sparks.^[21] NBC would proceed to televise WNBA games on Saturday^[22][23][24] and Sunday^[25] afternoons culminating in the Championship game on August 30.^[26][27]

On July 23, 2024, NBC parent company Comcast confirmed in a conference call with its investors that NBC Sports had secured an agreement with the WNBA on an eleven-year media rights deal beginning in the 2026 season, marking the WNBA's return to NBC after a 24-year absence.^[9] An official announcement of the agreement was released by the NBA and NBC the following day, alongside other deals with incumbents ABC/ESPN and Amazon.^[28][29] The agreement was initially going to see games broadcast on NBC, USA Network and streaming on Peacock,^[30][31] however in November 2024, Comcast announced that it would spin-off most of its cable networks, including USA Network, into Versant, with the games only airing on NBC and Peacock. In September 2025, Versant also secured an eleven-year agreement with the WNBA to air fifty games on USA, alongside the NBCUniversal, Disney and Amazon deals.^[32][33] NBC will also gain exclusive broadcast rights to seven WNBA semifinals series and three WNBA Finals series.^[29]

NBC Sports' broadcast of the inaugural WNBA game between the Liberty and Sparks received a 3.8 overnight national rating.^[34] This would also serve as NBC's highest rated WNBA game.^[35] Although NBC's end-of-season average^[36] for 1999 was even with 1998's average, viewership had actually increased from 1,540,000 households in 1998^[37] to 1,607,000 in 1999. On the same token however, Nielsen ratings for NBC broadcasts of WNBA games slipped^[38] from 2 million households reached in 1997—the WNBA's inaugural season—to 1.5 million in 1999.^[39]

The average rating for the first 9 of the 10^[40] WNBA games NBC carried in the 2001 season^[41] was only 1.1, compared to a 2.0 rating its first season.^[42]

The first WNBA season concluded with what was at the time, a single championship game. The following year, the finale series into a best-of-three games series, with NBC airing the first two games and ESPN airing the decisive third game. In 1999, ESPN aired the first game of the championship series while NBC covered the following two. Come the year 2000, Lifetime temporarily assumed ESPN's role as the WNBA's cable outlet for the WNBA Championship. Like the year prior, Lifetime broadcast the first game while NBC covered the second and ultimately decisive game between the Houston Comets and New York Liberty. This marked Houston's fourth consecutive WNBA Championship.

ESPN returned to the fold in the year 2001, broadcasting the first game with NBC airing the second and decisive game between the Los Angeles Sparks and Charlotte Sting. For NBC's final year of coverage in 2002, ESPN2 this time, broadcast the first game with NBC again covering what would become the second and ultimately decisive game, which would be NBC's last WNBA telecast to date until 2026. NBC will gain exclusive broadcast rights to three WNBA Finals series in 2026, 2030, and 2034.^[29]