The E. W. Scripps Company’s partnership with the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) proved to be extremely lucrative this season, with the company’s Scripps Sports brand drawing more than 20 million unique viewers to its live matches and shoulder programming.
This year marked the first full season for NWSL programming on Scripps Sports, which distributed matches across its local TV stations in markets where NWSL teams play and on its national broadcast and streaming network Ion.
“NWSL fans consistently showed up to watch Ion every week,” Scripps Sports President Brian Lawlor said in a statement. “It was an incredible first year. We expect to continue growing the audience and helping the league grow its fan base.”
“Our matches on ION brought incredible NWSL content to fans everywhere,” said Brian Gordon, the Senior Vice President of Broadcast at NWSL. “Beyond the matches, the ability to go in depth with our athletes and give them a platform to amplify their own stories helped our fans grow an even deeper affinity for the players, clubs and league. We are very proud of our collaboration with Scripps Sports and look forward to continuing our work together next season.”
Scripps Sports was the only broadcaster to produce a weekly show that offered highlights from NWSL games ad interviews with players and coaches in a documentary-style format. That helped boost the production value of NWSL games and made them stand out against peer broadcasters; of the 20.5 million people who watched NWSL games this season, 13.5 million watched exclusively on Ion. (NWSL rights are shared between Scripps Sports, Paramount’s CBS Sports, the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN and Amazon’s Prime Video.)
Half of all NWSL viewers watched games on Ion, which were presented as double-headers on Saturday night and peppered through the week on Ion and local TV stations. All told, Scripps Sports produced 50 matches — more than any other broadcast or cable network — and 53 studio shows, which include pre-game and post-game programming.
Individual matches broadcast on Ion drew an average audience of 145,000 viewers over the age of 2. The highest-rated match was a July 6 event between the Kansas City Current and the Orlando Pride.
Ion is available on dozens of over-the-air broadcast stations throughout the country, and on free, ad-supported streaming platforms like The Roku Channel, Plex, Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, Amazon Fire TV Channels, Pluto TV, Vizio WatchFree Plus, Xumo Play, CW FAST and Scripps-owned Tablo.
