TMRW Sports’ WTGL, the women’s version of TGL set to launch this winter, has secured its first media rights deal, with matches set to air across ABC/ESPN networks and Scripps Sports’ ION.
According to a report by Josh Carpenter in Sports Business Journal, the deal is a multiyear agreement, though exact financial terms weren’t disclosed. The 15 match days on WTGL’s debut schedule — which will begin Nov. 8 — are expected to split roughly 50/50 between ION and ESPN’s networks.
“ESPN and ION bring different but highly complementary strengths,” TMRW Sports golf president Rufus Hack said in a statement. “ESPN gives us premier sports reach, credibility, and a platform that can connect WTGL with core golf fans and broader sports audiences. … ION brings broad free over-the-air distribution and, like ESPN, a proven commitment to women’s sports.”
Scripps Sports president Brian Lawlor told SBJ that ION is paying a rights fee for WTGL, though he declined to specify the number. ESPN senior director of programming and acquisitions, John Suchenski, was similarly tight-lipped about ESPN’s end of the arrangement. Lawlor said the negotiations with TMRW Sports stretch back more than a year, predating any formal WTGL announcement, and that he’d made the trip to South Florida for multiple TGL matches during that stretch, and saw the value in adding another women’s sports property to ION’s lineup.
ION already carries the NWSL, WNBA and PWHL, and Lawlor said the network wants women’s sports programming year-round, something WTGL helps with since it plays in November and December, once the NWSL and WNBA seasons have finished up for the year. Every match is set to air on ION Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, which is more consistent than TGL’s own matches, which have aired on different nights and networks across its first two seasons.
“A lot of people know where to find it, the fact that the league would be there every week,” Lawlor said.
ESPN has carried TGL’s men’s league since its inception and has also supplied on-air talent for those broadcasts. Suchenski said WTGL’s talent lineup hasn’t been finalized but told SBJ to expect “probably some differences” from how TGL is currently presented. TMRW Sports will continue to handle production on WTGL in-house, as it does with TGL.
TGL is still in the middle of its own two-year ESPN agreement, and Awful Announcing wrote in July that ESPN was the front-runner to retain those rights in 2027 and beyond, per Carpenter’s reporting at the time. Wednesday’s announcement didn’t address that renewal, but Carpenter wrote that industry sources expect the men’s TGL to return to ESPN when its next season starts in early 2027, even though nothing’s been formally announced.