When the Dallas Wings open their 2025 WNBA season May 16 at Arlington’s College Park Center, they’ll play on national television. It’s an indicator of how the TV landscape has changed in recent years for the team and its league.
Monday at the Global Sports Business Summit, presented by SMU and the Dallas Sports Commission, an afternoon panel featured Wings CEO and Managing Partner Greg Bibb alongside representatives of his club’s regional broadcast partners: WFAA/KFAA President and General Manager Carolyn Mungo and Brad Ramsey, who serves as senior vice president and head of sports rights for the stations’ parent company, TEGNA.
The deal the parties announced in mid-February places all Wings games not exclusive to a national TV carrier on KFAA, Channel 29 in North Texas. Since moving to the area in 2016, the regional sports network currently known as FanDuel Sports Network Southwest had carried the local package. However, the defection of viewers to streaming options has flayed the cable-centric RSN model. As panel moderator Angela Lang of Tony Fay Public Relations noted, its “disintegration has opened the door for TEGNA to change the game for sports broadcasting.”
“We’ve done 15 sports rights agreements in the last 18 months in what we call this new era of distribution,” said Ramsey of the pacts to which his company has agreed for stations it owns in a number of markets. “Those deals (to televise live games) are across four leagues: the WNBA, NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball.”
A number of companies that own broadcast TV stations, including Gray and Scripps, have seen value in acquiring sports rights for nearby teams. “Informing and connecting communities is at the heart of what we do, right? And there is nothing that helps strengthen that connection more than live local sports,” Mungo suggested. “The community lead at the Dallas Wings has connected with our community lead at WFAA and KFAA and they’re already brainstorming on ways to empower and lead women and girls.”
Bibb said Mungo’s sentiment factored into their decision to join up with her stations, which had also recently acquired the rights for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.
“We ended up with TEGNA because of how they relate to the community, how they put an importance on that relationship, and, candidly, the reach that they have, not only in the DFW market, but beyond DFW, and they’ve done a great job in helping us establish relationships in 11 other markets around Texas,” he said, referencing additional agreements brokered with stations in other Texas cities to carry the KFAA coverage in their own markets. “We reach over 6.3 million households.”
Bibb acknowledged that financial considerations also played a role in coming to an agreement. Securing broadcasting deals that included a rights fee has often been a challenge for women’s sports teams. Local stations need to generate advertising revenue to pay those bills, a proposition that apparently makes more sense than it used to.
“In almost every case, the audience is bigger (on local stations versus RSNs), and that’s the biggest challenge, is proving out that we can grow the ad market and the sponsorship market at the same rate we can grow the audience,” said Ramsey. “Part of that is meeting new partners and bringing new people to the table to do business with us, and across those 15 deals, without a doubt, the most enthusiastic conversations we’ve had with potential new partners who are not already doing business with us on our traditional TV business has been the two WNBA deals with the Wings and the (Indiana) Fever.”
“I knew there was a hunger for our local advertisers to attach and align with live local sports. I didn’t know just how hungry they were,” added Mungo.
Wednesday, the Wings held their annual media day so internal and external content generators could gather video clips, photos, and interviews with coaches and players. A larger-than-most-years contingent of local and national media crowded into the College Park Center, including a KFAA crew. An extra buzz swirls around the team thanks to their selection of former Connecticut star Paige Bueckers with the WNBA Draft’s first pick. That excitement has a lot to do with why you’ll have to watch her first regular-season game on the ION Network (KPXD-TV, channel 68 in North Texas) instead of a Ron Thulin-led KFAA broadcast. The national rightsholder’s decision to pick up that game (and thereby pre-empt local broadcasters) speaks to both the Wings’ growth and that of women’s sports overall. ION, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, committed to a national TV deal with the WNBA in 2023. Shortly thereafter, they added a package with the National Women’s Soccer League.
The proliferation of arrangements like TEGNA’s and ION’s have, as Bibb said of his team and league, “really helped push us to the forefront and to the front of everyone’s mind when it comes to sports and the business of sports.”
Even as recently as three years ago, one might not have found traction with a panel like Monday’s entitled “Women’s Sports and Broadcasting: Expanding Leagues, Revenue Streams, and Fandom.” That has clearly changed.
