On February 19, ESPN announced it will launch “Women’s Sports Sundays” this summer. During these Sunday spotlights, ESPN will air WNBA and NWSL games instead of the MLB games they typically air during the day.

This is a huge movement for women’s sports as a whole, but especially for the WNBA. This should help to increase viewership in a league that is already growing. Last season, the WNBA saw a 6% increase in viewership from ESPN alone and a 5% viewership increase in viewership across all platforms in the regular season. In the postseason, the Las Vegas Aces’ insane championship run helped drive the viewership even more, increasing by 30%.

ESPN is already airing WNBA games on occasion, so providing the league a weekly time slot makes sense. Instead of airing random games throughout the week, fans now know that they can go to ESPN, arguably the largest sports network in the USA, to watch all the WNBA games they can on Sundays.

The WNBA is poised for an incredible 2026 season. They are supposed to see the growth of the league with two more teams, the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire, making their debut this season. They also have a class of strong draft talent entering the league, which gives new talent the chance to rise to the top. However, the WNBPA is halting the momentum the league is currently undergoing.

At this point, there is no guarantee that a 2026 season will happen. The WNBPA has sent a counterproposal to the WNBA’s current CBA proposal, as the two sides cannot agree on the amount of revenue share the players should receive.

Ultimately, this should not be a subject of debate. The players are the reason the WNBA has any traction to begin with. Players like Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers have helped bring in more fans and revenue in the past couple of seasons, and it is due to their success that all the players deserve to reap the benefits of their continued success and growth.

At the end of the day, the WNBA is at the height of its growth at this moment, and ESPN’s “Women’s Sports Sundays” is just going to help continue this growth.

Hopefully, the WNBA and the WNBPA can come to an agreement so they can get underway with the 2026 season.