{"id":11833,"date":"2023-11-09T20:49:22","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T20:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inbudgetalerts.com\/business\/us-national-womens-soccer-league-signs-240mn-media-rights-deal\/"},"modified":"2023-11-09T20:49:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T20:49:22","slug":"us-national-womens-soccer-league-signs-240mn-media-rights-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inbudgetalerts.com\/?p=11833","title":{"rendered":"US National Women\u2019s Soccer League signs $240mn media rights deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=c127abb9-13fe-4b08-9982-e8d8e1d770e8\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>The US National Women\u2019s Soccer League has signed a $240mn four-year media rights package, 40 times as much as its last rights agreement, in an indication of the growing interest in women\u2019s sport.<\/p>\n<p>The domestic rights deal takes effect next year and will expand the league\u2019s matches across Paramount\u2019s CBS, Disney\u2019s ESPN and ABC, Amazon Prime Video and Scripps Sports. The number of nationally televised fixtures will nearly quadruple under the partnerships, from 30 to 118, each year, according to NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman.<\/p>\n<p>The current three-year, $4.5mn contract with CBS, which was signed in 2020, in effect expires after Saturday\u2019s championship match between the OL Reign and Gotham FC. That will also be the final fixture for two of the biggest stars in US women\u2019s football: Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger, who are retiring.<\/p>\n<p>The NWSL deal reflects the resilient market for live sports as well as women\u2019s sport. Over the course of the league\u2019s existing contract with CBS, it has added three teams and announced plans for at least two more. Fees for adding new clubs have grown tenfold, and the league has tripled the size of its own staff.<\/p>\n<p>Over the same period, a number of US professional and college sports organisations have signed record media rights contracts, including the National Football League\u2019s 11-year deal, the most valuable in the world at roughly $110bn. Major League Soccer, the US professional men\u2019s league, last year signed a first-of-its-kind $2.5bn 10-year contract to air exclusively on Apple\u2019s subscription streaming service.<\/p>\n<p>While pursuing the NWSL rights deal, Berman said she stressed the importance of expanding women\u2019s football on free-to-air television. Over the past year, average viewership had risen 18 per cent on CBS\u2019s linear network, and total viewership had grown 41 per cent, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn order for us to experience growth, we need to have massive exposure so we can\u2019t be behind a paywall\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The package features a mix of rights for national TV broadcasts and streaming services. In addition to legacy companies airing live sports \u2014 Paramount\u2019s CBS and Disney\u2019s ABC and ESPN \u2014 the package includes two relative newcomers, including Amazon Prime Video as well as Scripps, which launched a sports division to secure broadcast rights for its Ion network just last year.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Symson, chief executive of Ohio-based Scripps, said on an earnings call last week that its first season airing Women\u2019s National Basketball Association games helped the women\u2019s professional league increase its television reach by 30 per cent. He said \u201clive sports rights drove new value for Scripps, with 65 per cent of the revenue we generated from sponsorships and advertising coming from new-to-Scripps accounts\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The WNBA\u2019s existing media rights with ESPN and Scripps expire in 2025. Their value varies from year to year but ranges between $13mn-$33mn, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n<p>Berman said that she believed there was a \u201cmarket correction\u201d in progress for women\u2019s sports, and that the WNBA \u201chave been rooting for us and we will be rooting for them\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/c127abb9-13fe-4b08-9982-e8d8e1d770e8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The US&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>US National Women\u2019s Soccer League signs $240mn media rights deal | InBudgetAlerts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The US National Women\u2019s Soccer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/inbudgetalerts.com\/?p=11833\" \/>\n<meta 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