Prior to Scripps’ upfront presentation at the Barclays Center on Wednesday night, Scripps Sports president Brian Lawlor said the media company remains in discussion with the WNBA to extend the league’s broadcasting deal with Ion Television, a sign of how important women’s sports have become to its audience strategy.
The initial three-year deal, in which Ion pays the league $13 million annually, expires at the end of the 2025 season.
“When the NBA did all of their big deals, they bundled in a lot of the WNBA rights to NBC and to Disney and [Amazon],” Lawlor said in an interview. “The one thing you didn’t see bundled in was Friday night. They really value what Ion brings with that national distribution, the new audience, the incredible visibility, so they protected Friday nights. I fully expect that—not just this season, but for many years down the road—we’ll be long-term partners with them.”
Ion has traditionally held a mostly female audience thanks to being a long-time syndication home for procedural crime dramas such as Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds and Blue Bloods. In 2023, the network revamped its Friday night primetime slate to create a weekly doubleheader, WNBA Friday Night Spotlight.
After a solid first season, the Caitlin Clark phenomenon in 2024 gave the network seven telecasts with over 1 million viewers, lifting the primetime daypart by 133%. WNBA Friday Night Spotlight pulled in 670,000 viewers, more than doubling 2023 numbers.
Ion also signed a broadcasting deal with the NWSL in 2024, creating a second “franchise” programming block with a Saturday doubleheader for most of its telecasts. The network averaged 145,000 viewers across 50 matches, with its top-rated showing of 234,000 viewers on July 6 when the eventual league champion Orlando Pride snapped the Kansas City Current’s 17-game unbeaten streak.
“Our sports audience in the WNBA and NWSL is younger, it’s more diverse, and it’s more balanced male/female than our normal Ion programming,” Lawlor said. “So we’re bringing the league new viewers because of our platform, and their loyal fans are finding Ion for the first time and then sticking around watching other stuff.”
Scripps remains open to working with any league on distribution, but the two “franchises” have been building blocks for other women’s competitions to come on board.
Ion will be the exclusive home to a new biannual event from Sports Illustrated, the SI Women’s Games, that’s set to debut in late October. The weeklong “Team Americas vs. Team World” event will feature elite athletes competing for prize money in flag football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, gymnastics and combat sports.
Lawlor said some athletes have already been signed, with “the opportunity to have Olympic gold and silver medalists, finalists, competing against each other in this event. I think it will get a lot of attention at the point when we start announcing who is going to participate.”
Ion will also be the home of the Elevance Health Women’s Fort Myers Tip-Off for the next five years. The Thanksgiving basketball showcase has previously featured collegiate powers South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland and Purdue. Teams have not been announced for 2025, but Lawlor expects top programs will continue to play in the event.
Lawlor said the new events will attract more first-time advertisers to Ion, following the pattern of the WNBA and NWSL. For the SI Women’s Games in particular, Ion will have daytime shows where athletes will tell stories about their professional careers and the importance of supporting girls in sports.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of programming that won’t be visible on TV,” he said, adding, “there’ll be a lot of connections and activations with clients there that will be really unique for the space.”
