Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark participates in a game between the MN Lynx vs Indiana Fever at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 14th, 2024.
Basketball superstar Caitlin Clark participates in a game between the MN Lynx vs Indiana Fever at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 14th, 2024. (Photo by John Mac)
Pay television provider DirecTV will offer an expanded slate of Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) games available on its streaming and satellite platforms this season, the company confirmed on Thursday.
Residential and business subscribers of DirecTV will be able to watch WNBA games airing on local broadcast stations owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, in addition to nationally-televised games that are available on Scripps’ Ion network.
The locally-televised games will be available to all DirecTV subscribers through spillover channels that appear within the electronic program guide on Friday evenings. The games will be accessible to subscribers who have Ion in their pay TV packages. Legacy customers with U-Verse as their pay TV provider will also be able to watch the extra games, a DirecTV spokesperson confirmed.
“This is a win for WNBA fans,” Matthew Hijuelos, the Vice President of Distribution at Scripps, said in a statement. “Combining the power of Scripps’ local market presence with the reach of Ion on DirecTV, we can bring audiences even more ways to watch the WNBA action this season. At the same time, we’re able to expand the ways that advertisers can reach these highly engaged sports fans.”
DirecTV is the first to promote the spillover channels that offer national access to additional WNBA games that are typically only available in local TV markets. Similar spillover channels are also available on YouTube TV, the Google-backed streaming service that competes with DirecTV’s online products, though YouTube has not promoted the channels, and YouTube TV subscribers with customized guides must manually add or tune to them.
The games will be a bit easier to find on DirecTV — national double-header games played on Fridays will air on Ion, which is available on DirecTV Channel 305; U-Verse Channel 1068 (HD) and Channel 68 (SD); and by searching for “Ion” on DirecTV Stream. The spillover channels will appear adjacent to Ion on DirecTV and U-Verse when they air, a spokesperson confirmed.