WNBA President Lisa Borders presents Sylvia Fowles of the Minnesota Lynx the MVP of the WNBA Finals in 2017. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
The WNBA is reupping its streaming partnership with Twitter for a second season. The league announced plans this week to livestream 20 games on the social media app over the 2018 regular season.
The first four of those games will be streamed on Sunday, May 20, during the league’s opening weekend. Coverage will tip off at 1 p.m. ET with the Aces visiting the Sun, followed by games at 3 p.m. (Dream-Wings), 7 p.m. (Liberty-Sky) and 9 p.m. (Storm-Mercury). The streamed games will be part of a Verizon-sponsored #WNBAAllDay six-game event that will feature action from all 12 WNBA teams. The remaining 16 streamed games will stream on Tuesdays throughout the regular season, with the final game scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 19.
Every WNBA team will make at least two game appearances on Twitter. Additional coverage can be found on ESPN2, NBA TV, WNBA League Pass and the ESPN App.
SportTechie Takeaway
Last year, the WNBA became the first professional women’s sports league to stream a game on Twitter. It joins the NBA in pushing forward digital boundaries. The NBA, through its suite of basketball and esports brands, has positioned itself as one of the earliest adopters of technology among the four major U.S. sports leagues.
Last year, the WNBA averaged 613,000 unique viewers per game over 20 streamed contests. The two biggest games occurred right at the start of the season: the Mercury vs. the Wings on May 14, 2017, and the Stars vs. the Wings on May 25. The three most-watched games over the 2017 season averaged 1.1 million unique viewers.
WNBA President Lisa Border was happy with the numbers. At a press conference in 2017, Borders said the Twitter stream showed a hunger for the WNBA and for women’s basketball in particular, particularly abroad.
Twitter, meanwhile, has been busy inking partnerships to expand its sports programming beyond the WNBA. Earlier this week, Twitter announced a robust lineup of sports content from ESPN, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, Formula 1, The Players’ Tribune, Bleacher Report, and Barstool Sports.
The 2018 sports coverage on Twitter will include a mix of live sports and TV shows, including some that will stream exclusively on Twitter, such as a post-race Formula 1 show and an eight-episode “Barstool Live” series by Barstool Sports.
