WNBA star DiJonai Carrington sharply criticized the league over its national TV broadcast strategy—but her frustrations may have been misplaced.
After the Connecticut Sun player’s win over the Los Angeles Sparks in Boston on Tuesday, she blasted the WNBA for not ensuring the sold-out TD Garden showcase was nationally televised.
“The game should have been on the national television broadcast,” Carrington said at a news conference. “You shouldn’t have to pay for any type of subscription to see a game that’s this historic, in my opinion.”
However, the WNBA doesn’t pick the national TV slate under its current deals with rights holders, who hold total power over which regular-season games to show.
ESPN or NBA TV could have exercised their right to broadcast the Sun vs. Sparks. The game was shown on a local channel and streamed via social media instead.
ESPN didn’t have much of a choice with its rejection, as it’s contractually obligated to show the Little League World Series this week. The network is the exclusive rights holder for the Little League World Series through at least 2030; it announced its most recent agreement with the baseball organization in 2020.
NBA TV, meanwhile, opted to broadcast Tuesday night’s New York Liberty vs. Dallas Wings game instead of Sun vs. Sparks, as it had planned to do since before the season in a choice announced in April. NBA TV is a Warner Bros. Discovery produced network.
Warner Bros. Discovery declined to provide further explanation for the decision.
Other WNBA TV partners are tied to different days of the week, taking them out of the running to show Tuesday’s game. Ion shows games on Friday nights, Amazon Prime typically streams games on Thursday nights and CBS handles action on weekends.
In addition to blaming the WNBA for her team’s national TV snub, Carrington, the frustrated Connecticut player, said the league fails to market the Sun sufficiently, a claim the WNBA has denied.
“I’m going to keep it real all the time—I feel like Connecticut as a franchise is historically disrespected,” Carrington said at a news conference Tuesday night. “So sometimes if you want something, you gotta go out there and do it yourself. So that’s what I did for us [by discussing the TV broadcast setup on social media].
“I think that there could have been a lot more publicity or promo from the top. Connecticut had announced that we were having this game probably almost a year ago. … There was ample time to do what was needed to get done.”
Connecticut is among the WNBA’s title favorites this year, entering Thursday with the league’s second-best record at 20-7, behind only the Liberty. It added firepower before the trade deadline by acquiring Marina Mabrey from the rebuilding Chicago Sky.
Carrington is one of the Sun’s breakout stars—and she’s become an influential personality off the court, too, amassing more than 350,000 followers on Instagram.
