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With the popularity of women’s basketball on the rise, Prime Video and the WNBA have reached an extension of their current rights deal through the next two seasons.

Rights to the NBA and the WNBA are set to expire in 2025 and speculation has been growing about the WNBA being due for a significant hike over current rates given viewership trends. An NCAA tournament game earlier this week featuring the University of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Lsu’s Angel Reese drew a record audience of 12.3 million viewers. Both players are slated to be high picks in the forthcoming WNBA draft.

Financial terms of the extension were not disclosed.

The WNBA, which also has deal with ESPN and last year also signed one with Ion, has performed well for Prime Video. The official announcement of the extension noted that the 2023 WNBA Commissioner’s Cup content nearly doubled the tune-in for...

The WNBA has inked a multi-year rights extension with one of its key media partners: Prime Video.

The Amazon-owned streaming service will televise 21 games for the upcoming 28th season, including the Championship Game of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup. The deal runs through the 2025 season, and financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal comes at a big moment for college basketball, with two of the biggest college stars — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Lsu’s Angel Reese — declaring for this year’s WNBA Draft.

“We’re thrilled to continue bringing exclusive national coverage of the WNBA and highlighting these exceptional athletes to Prime members,” said Charlie Neiman, head of sports partnerships for Prime Video. “Following a successful 2023 season, we’re looking forward to reaching even more milestones with the WNBA and furthering our commitment to women’s sports.”

“We are incredibly pleased that Prime Video is making a meaningful and...

Prime Video has been broadcasting games in various worldwide regions for years, and this deal will keep nearly two dozen games on the streamer in the U.S. every season.

As the sporting world turns its focus to the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four on Friday, Amazon has even more exciting news for women’s hoop fans. The tech giant announced that it had signed a multi-year deal with the WNBA to bring 21 games, including the Commissioner’s Cup Championship Game, to Prime Video. This contract extension comes as women’s sports — particularly basketball — are seeing meteoric increases in popularity and ratings. And with college basketball’s all-time leading scorer Caitlin Clark set to enter the league this summer, now seems like the perfect time to lock up as many WNBA games as possible for the next few seasons.

Key Details: Prime Video will broadcast nearly two dozen WNBA games...

Women’s pro hoops are coming back to Amazon’s Prime Video for at least two more years.

Prime Video and the WNBA on Friday announced a rights renewal deal under which Prime Video will continue to be the exclusive U.S. streaming partner for a package of 21 games each season, including the Championship Game of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup. The Prime Video deal extension covers the 2024 and ’25 seasons.

Financial terms of the pact were not disclosed. Prime Video first became an WNBA partner for the 2021 season, when it streamed 16 games. The 2024 season is expected to run from May 14-Sept. 19 with each of the league’s 12 teams playing 40 games.

Per Amazon, the 2023 WNBA Commissioner’s Cup attracted the largest audience for an WNBA game ever for Prime Video, nearly doubling the viewership over the prior year. The deal renewal comes amid a surge in interest in women’s sports in general.

The WNBA hopes to find new bounce when it starts a line-up of Friday-night games on the broadcast network Ion.

The pact is part of a new deal struck between E.W. Scripps, which purchased Ion in 2020 for $2.65 billion and brings live sports to the outlet for the first time since it launched in 1998 as Pax TV, then under the aegis of Paxson Communications. And it suggests a new model for sports leagues hoping to navigate an era in which the traditional sports model — reaching fans via national and regional cable — is facing challenges.

The deal will give the WNBA more audience reach, with an “appointment viewing” event each Friday, says Colie Edison, the WNBA’s chief growth officer, in an interview. The league’s games are telecast by Disney’s ESPN and ABC, and Paramount Global’s CBS Sports, but those companies have rights deals with other, bigger leagues...

Desus & Mero will continue to bring the laughs at Showtime: The late-night talk show has been renewed for Season 3, to air in 2021.

The second season is currently airing weekly on Sunday and Thursday nights at 11/10c from the hosts’ homes.

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“All of us at Showtime are so proud to have Desus & Mero as our signature late-night series,” Showtime entertainment president...

When Kyle Troup bowls a strike, he sometimes pulls a hair pick out of his pocket and uses it to comb his mass of curls. And in making that motion, he’s sort of completing a circle.

Troup and young bowlers like him figure prominently in Fox’s plans to give bowling a better position at the weekend-sports table. “There are just a lot of fun, young stars in the Pba,” says Bill Wanger, executive vice president of programming, research and content strategy at Fox Sports. “We want to broaden their appeal.”

Some of TV’s first bowling programs also relied on participants who put as much emphasis on personality as they did on getting a ball down the lane. Early TV bowlers were known to whip the ball with a belt if they missed a chance for a strike or jump over the ball rack. “One would holler ‘Soo-ee,...