{"id":311890,"date":"2025-11-25T01:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T01:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/311890\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T01:55:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T01:55:06","slug":"espns-ryan-ruocco-and-rebecca-lobo-dish-on-why-they-think-the-wnba-would-be-crazy-to-stop-the-momentum-they-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/311890\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN’s Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo dish on why they think the WNBA would be crazy to stop the momentum they have."},"content":{"rendered":"

WNBA viewership has exploded in recent years, and ESPN women\u2019s basketball mainstays Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo both told me they\u2019re positive a labor deal will get done. \u201cIt would be the greatest own goal in the history of sports,\u201d Ruocco said. \u201cA work stoppage would be detrimental to everything they\u2019ve been growing. And I do think that regardless of whatever posturing is happening publicly, regardless of whatever negotiating is happening, I do think you have really smart people on both sides who both recognize that this is a moment where momentum needs to continue, not be stopped.\u201d Lobo, who reupped last week<\/a>, added: \u201cI\u2019m really confident that both sides are going to find common ground, because there\u2019s so much at stake now, where there hasn\u2019t been as much at stake in past years just because the level of interest was not where it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netflix isn\u2019t that interested in sports, right? Well, the Athletic reported Monday evening that ESPN\u2019s Elle Duncan is likely to become the new face<\/a> of Netflix\u2019s sports division, making her the service\u2019s first high-profile, full-time on-air personality. This comes after many networks have said they no longer want to share their talent with Netflix as the company expands into more live events, such as Christmas Day NFL. <\/p>\n

NBA fans get an early feast on the night before Thanksgiving, as ESPN will have its first tripleheader. Pistons-Celtics starts things off at 5 p.m., then Timberwolves-Thunder and Rockets-Warriors. The NBA on ESPN is up 24% after 11 games (1.62 million viewers). \u201cInside the NBA\u201d is averaging 927,000 viewers after four shows, while \u201cNBA Tip-Off\u201d is averaging 716,000.<\/p>\n

College wrestling fans are super loyal. For the two days of coverage of the recent National Duals Invitational on FloSports, which didn\u2019t even include the finals: 21 million video views, 3 hours of time spent per user and over 1 million social engagements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA viewership has exploded in recent years, and ESPN women\u2019s basketball mainstays Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-311890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}