For years, fans of women’s basketball have urged ESPN to enhance its coverage of the WNBA. Although the network has broadcast the league’s entire postseason, its draft, and select regular-season games for nearly two decades, it has only recently begun to consider a regular pre- or post-game studio show, with WNBA coverage remaining limited in ESPN’s daytime lineup.
However, it appears that change is on the horizon. In a recent article in Front Office Sports, ESPN’s VP of Production for NBA and WNBA studio, Hilary Guy, teased the potential launch of a daily WNBA Today program. Guy aims to expand the existing WNBA Today segment within the hourlong NBA Today show at 3 p.m. ET, which could lead to a new, dedicated show.
“Lots of plans in the works,” Guy stated to FOS. “I can’t reveal all right now. We will at some point be announcing our plans for the full season and they are very exciting. But I will say from an NBA Today perspective, which I also oversee, we have a WNBA Today segment that we do all the time, and I only see that growing within that show itself. There’s more on the horizon as well.”
ESPN basketball analyst Chiney Ogwumike, a regular panelist on NBA Today and the immensely popular NCAA Women’s Championship In the Studio and WNBA Countdown, expressed that a daily WNBA show would signify that the sport has “arrived.” Ogwumike remarked, “There’s been a lot of rumblings about, ‘We need a women’s show,’ something daily. To me, that’s been the biggest goal of mine. Having a show like that would show that we’ve arrived.”
In previous instances, talent such as Sarah Spain has left ESPN in pursuit of consistent roles covering women’s sports. Despite holding the rights to the WNBA, NWSL, and women’s college basketball, the network has yet to invest in a comprehensive studio show dedicated to any of these sports or women’s athletics more broadly. While ESPN’s daytime schedule is largely booked (with a potential gap at 5 p.m. ET when Around the Horn concludes in May), ESPN2 could accommodate a WNBA studio show alongside ESPN Bet Live and re-aired podcasts. Alternatively, the network might choose to incorporate a WNBA show into the ESPN+ subscription tier, following the model used for the ESPN FC soccer breakdown show and the NHL breakdown show In the Crease.
