2026 WNBA season · broadcast audit · data as of Aug 11, 2026
336 games · May 1 to Sept 24 · 11 subscribable services
Every fan already knows women's basketball is hard to find. This is the arithmetic: what it actually costs to watch, and who gets stuck with the expensive version.
We scored all 336 games of the 2026 season against every combination of the services that carry them, from every team's home city. It is not close to fair.
In brief
Chapter one · the ladder
Take one fan in Chicago trying to follow the whole league. Each rung below is a plausible setup, and the bar is the share of the season it actually unlocks. Every price is per month, for each of the roughly five months the season runs.
The first $83 a month buys a bit over half the league. The last $74 buys twelve more points. Run the top rung across the whole season and you have spent about $850, and you still haven't seen all 336 games.
Chapter two · the lottery
Most fans don't chase the whole league. They follow one team. So here is the cheapest way to see at least 95% of your team's season, from your team's own city.
A Portland fan needs an antenna. A Washington fan needs $91.98 a month.
* No priced combination reaches 95% of Golden State's season from the Bay Area. Their ceiling is 89%.
Baskets include everything they carry: a cable bundle delivers the same over-the-air channels an antenna does, so a team's antenna games are inside every cable price, not missing from it.
Chapter three · the contract
You might guess some cities are just better served than others. That's not what's happening. Ask a narrower question: how much of your team's season can you watch for free, in your team's own city? The league splits in two.
There is no middle. Every club in the top group puts its local games on a free station. A few also sell a paid stream, like Merc+ or Prime Video Seattle, but the free path exists. Every club below the line sold its local rights to a cable regional sports network, and their fans fall off a cliff: from two thirds of the season down to a fifth. Portland's Fox 12 Plus carries the Fire home and away for nothing. A Mystics fan can't watch a single locally televised game without buying an $83 bundle first. The free fifth of their season is all national games.
The two tables answer different questions, and a team can look good on one and bad on the other. Chapter two asked what it costs to see everything. This one asks how far $0 gets you.
Indiana shows the difference. The Fever's own stations carry just 17 of their 44 games, but the Fever are on national TV constantly, and those free windows get an Indianapolis fan to 75% of the season without spending anything. The last quarter sits on cable, so a fan who wants all of it still pays $91.98 a month. A high floor and a high price at the same time.
The uncomfortable part: two equally devoted fans get 96% and 22% of their team for the same $0, because of a rights deal neither of them signed, got asked about, or can read.
Chapter four · the border
Now give a Canadian fan every Canadian service that exists: the full TV package, TSN, Crave, League Pass, all of it. Then ask what they can watch.
The 63 are the ones people complain about: US cable channels that aren't licensed north of the border. Fair enough, at least that's a business decision that can be pointed to.
It's the 94 that should bother you.
Those are games whose only possible Canadian route is a US streaming service: Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, NBA TV, ESPN's apps. All of them operate in Canada. None of them say which of these games their Canadian versions include, and neither does the league. A Canadian fan has no way to find out ahead of time whether they can watch 28% of the WNBA season. They have to buy the subscription and see.
That one isn't a rights problem, it's an information problem. Somebody could fix it tomorrow by publishing a list.
How we did it
Every 2026 WNBA fixture and broadcast listing was pulled from ESPN's published schedule, then scored with the same rights engine that powers DubSports. It's the engine that answers "can I watch this with what I already have?" for real fans every day. If this report and the app ever disagree, we want to hear about it.
Want to check our work? Email haley@dubsports.io and I'll send the full per-game CSV.