A New Era: ESPN Launches Weekly Women’s Sports Sundays
ESPN will dedicate its Sunday lineup to women’s sports starting Summer 2026, anchoring the day with WNBA and NWSL games in a move executives call a “continuing commitment,” 15 years in the making.
Featured Image: Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images
For the first time in its 45-year history, ESPN is carving out a weekly primetime franchise dedicated entirely to women’s sports. The network announced that beginning in Summer 2026, Sundays will officially become “Women’s Sports Sundays”—a standing appointment for live games, studio coverage, and storytelling centered on female athletes.
Yes, you read the right. After 15 years of expanding women’s sports coverage across platforms and decades of criticism about visibility gaps, ESPN is finally planting its flag.
The move comes after the network ended its 35 year run of “Sunday Night Baseball,” following a reworked media deal with Major League Baseball. Instead of anchoring Sundays around baseball, ESPN will now use the day to spotlight the WNBA, NWSL, women’s college basketball, softball, and other marquee matchups.
we get rid of the worst baseball broadcast AND get more women's sports? dub https://t.co/jZ1zY4bO1J
— todd bonzalez (@doinkpatrol) February 19, 2026
“Sundays are a day of the week when we see a ton of our best women’s sports programming, and we will have events outside of our primetime window,” Susie Piotrkowski, ESPN’s vice president of women’s sports programming and espnW, told Variety. “We saw an opportunity to have access in what I would call women’s sports season, the summer months. This was an opportunity to be intentional and make sure our most premium women’s sports properties [were shown regularly].”
“Intentional” is the key word here.
According to Rosalyn Durant, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and acquisitions, this isn’t a trial run. “Women’s Sports Sundays isn’t an experiment,” she said in an interview. “It is a flag in the ground, and a continuing commitment.”
Durant pushed back on the idea that women’s sports need a novelty hook to draw audiences. “We are setting in an expectation,” she explained. “We want it to be a mainstay and part of a sports fan’s plans.” She added that fans today are less concerned with whether men or women are playing and more focused on the athletes themselves and the quality of competition.
The franchise will be anchored by live games from WNBA and the NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League), along with studio programming and expanded digital and social coverage. ESPN is expected to announce full schedules and commentator lineups in the coming weeks.
The shift also reflects the undeniable momentum in women’s sports viewership. From record-breaking WNBA ratings to surging attendance in the NWSL and women’s college basketball, the demand is there, and has been for years.
So yes, it’s long overdue. Fifteen years of building, negotiating rights, expanding coverage, and responding to cultural changes. But now, instead of squeezing women’s games into leftover slots, ESPN is restructuring its Sunday identity around them. We’re getting…somewhere.
