{"id":480848,"date":"2026-02-21T00:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480848\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T00:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:16:10","slug":"post-mlb-espn-rebooting-its-sunday-night-with-womens-sports-sundays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480848\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-MLB, ESPN rebooting its Sunday night with \u2018Women\u2019s Sports Sundays\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

As NBC builds a year-round Sunday night live-sports portfolio<\/a> of NFL, NBA and \u2014 coming next month \u2014 MLB, ESPN is rolling out its own innovative Sunday night programming strategy, hubbed around the top two women\u2019s pro sports leagues.<\/p>\n

Weekly throughout the summer, \u201cWomen\u2019s Sports Sundays\u201d will feature WNBA or NWSL games on nine Sundays in primetime, extending a trend of women\u2019s pro sports leagues receiving prominent recurring primetime schedule slots on broadcast, cable and streaming networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis franchise is about more than showcasing games,\u201d ESPN programming executive Roslyn Durant said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s about building a consistent, high-profile destination that reflects the passion, excellence and cultural impact of women\u2019s sports today, while giving athletes and leagues the stage they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current women\u2019s sports \u201cgame of the week\u201d programming models include the WNBA\u2019s long-standing \u201cFriday Night Spotlight\u201d deal on the ION network<\/a> (which averaged nearly 630,000 viewers per game during the 2025 WNBA season) and, launching a few weeks ago, LOVB women\u2019s pro volleyball on USA Network on Wednesday nights<\/a> (which set new league TV records during its initial weeks and has averaged 115,000 viewers this season).<\/p>\n

NWSL has a pair of notable weekly primetime deals: Friday nights Amazon Prime Video, which launches March 13 for the 2026 season, and Saturday nights on ION. NWSL TV ratings were up 22 percent from 2024 to 2025, and the league\u2019s 2025 championship game set a new NWSL TV record<\/a> with nearly 1.2 million viewers.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be surprised by the entirely realistic scenario that a compelling ESPN Sunday night WNBA game \u2014 say, Caitlin Clark vs. Paige Bueckers \u2014 draws a bigger TV audience than \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d on Peacock, or even possibly NBC itself. (For context: \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d drew an average of around 1.8 million viewers in 2025, the highest mark since 2017, a number that should increase on a broadcast network like NBC but decrease on a streaming platform like Peacock. ESPN averaged 1.3 million viewers per regular-season WNBA game in 2025, and that was largely without the benefits of the \u201cCaitlin Clark effect,\u201d due to her absence from injury last season.)<\/p>\n

ESPN\u2019s announcement of the new live-sports property drew attention from all corners of social media, with a lot of sentiment being positive but some uninformed responses related to ESPN replacing baseball on Sunday nights with women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u2019s Andrew Marchand produced a helpful series of points clarifying why ESPN\u2019s new strategy makes sense:<\/p>\n

\u2022 ESPN opted-out of \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d nearly a year ago<\/a> because it was overpriced.<\/p>\n

\u2022 They now have open Sunday night spring and summer windows.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The WNBA and NWSL are their best options \u2014 ESPN already broadcasts these leagues \u2014 so they branded the night around \u201cwomen\u2019s sports.\u201d It is not some \u201cwoke\u201d move as it was portrayed by some. They already had these sports on, but now are making a set destination for some of these games in light of opting out of SNB.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A kind portrayal is this move offends some because they love ESPN\u2019s \u201cSunday Night Baseball.\u201d NBC is expected to hire Jason Benetti and have local analysts. So if you are sincerely upset and not acting, just put on Peacock and NBC. They\u2019ll do a nice job. Play ball!<\/p>\n

\u2022 ESPN is a for-profit business. They aren\u2019t putting these sports on out of the kindness of their heart. Post-SNB, they believe this is their best option. You put a Caitlin Clark game up against a mediocre \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d matchup and they may be proven very correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As NBC builds a year-round Sunday night live-sports portfolio of NFL, NBA and \u2014 coming next month \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[46185,99,1794,434],"class_list":["post-480848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-nwsl","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480848","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=480848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}