NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The WNBA is expanding its schedule to 50 games per team next season \u2014 the most in the league\u2019s 30-year history.<\/p>\n
The new collective bargaining agreement that was ratified earlier this year allows the league to play up to 50 games for the next two seasons. There can be up to 52 regular-season games in 2029 and for the rest of the CBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemand for the WNBA has never been greater, and expanding to a 50-game regular season reflects the extraordinary momentum we are seeing across the league,\u201d WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis move reflects our commitment to growing the game and creating more opportunities for fans to watch the best players in the world and experience the extraordinary talent and competition that define the WNBA.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league is playing 44 games again this season. Over the next few seasons the WNBA is adding three new teams through expansion. Cleveland is joining in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030. Connecticut is moving to Houston next year.<\/p>\n
When the league first started in 1997, teams only played 28 games. That\u2019s grown over the past three decades with the exception of 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Engelbert has said she\u2019d love to play games overseas starting next saeson. The league expanded its footprint to Canada this year with the addition of the Toronto Tempo \u2014 the first WNBA franchise outside of the United States.<\/p>\n
The WNBA has added a lot of new TV and streaming partners over the past few years including ION, USA Sports, NBC and Amazon to go along with ESPN and CBS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The WNBA is expanding its schedule to 50 games per team next season \u2014 the most in the league\u2019s 30-year history. The new collective bargaining agreement that was ratified earlier this year allows the league to play up to 50 games for the next two seasons. There can be up to … Continue reading WNBA to expand to 50-game schedule for teams next season<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 13:46:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516196,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516195\/revisions\/1516196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}