WNBA Announces Schedule for 2007 Season

NEW YORK, Jan. 4, 2007 - The WNBA announced today that its second decade of play will tip off on Saturday, May 19, 2007 and will feature a record number of national telecasts. Comprehensive coverage of the 2007 WNBA regular season will include 91 national telecasts on ABC, ESPN2 and NBA TV.

The 2007 season will open the same way 2006 closed: Shock vs. Monarchs. Ron Hoskins/NBAE/Getty Images

The combined coverage on ABC and ESPN2 will feature 22 national telecasts, including the 2007 WNBA All-Star Game on ABC. ESPN2 will once again be the source of appointment viewing for WNBA fans in 2007. Highlighting ESPN2's schedule of 16 regular season telecasts will be the second consecutive year of "WNBA Tuesdays", which includes five doubleheaders and gives fans the opportunity to watch WNBA action on 11 of 14 Tuesday nights throughout the season. ABC tips off WNBA coverage on opening day with its first of six telecasts.

Rounding out the broadcast schedule, NBA TV, the league's 24-hour television network, will televise 69 regular season contests.

"We are very much looking forward to tipping off a season featuring record television coverage of the best female basketball players in the world," said WNBA President Donna Orender. "Coming off a season like 2006 in which scoring increased dramatically, superstars reached new heights and a record four rookies became All-Stars, we will showcase our athletes like never before."

As previously announced, the Charlotte Sting will not operate next summer. The WNBA will play the 2007 season with 13 teams.

Under the 2007 season's 13-team format, the WNBA's Eastern Conference will feature six teams (Connecticut Sun, Chicago Sky, Detroit Shock, Indiana Fever, New York Liberty, Washington Mystics) while the Western Conference (Houston Comets, Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx, Phoenix Mercury, Sacramento Monarchs, San Antonio Silver Stars and Seattle Storm) remains at seven teams. Eastern Conference teams will play each in-conference opponent four times and each out-of-conference opponent twice. Western Conference teams will play four of the six in-conference opponents on four occasions and the remaining two in-conference opponents twice in addition to playing each out-of-conference opponent two times in 2007.

Scoring leader Diana Taurasi is a draw no matter where the Mercury travel tp. Warren Skalski/NBAE/Getty Images

The 2007 WNBA regular season concludes on Sunday, August 19, with the playoffs scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 23.

Click here for the complete 2007 regular
season and game broadcast schedules.

About the WNBA
In 2006, the WNBA concluded its historic tenth season with an action-packed WNBA Finals. The 2006 WNBA Finals presented by Vonage capped a playoff run in which the WNBA saw significant increases in attendance and viewership. The Finals, which aired live on ESPN2, saw the Detroit Shock top the Sacramento Monarchs in the first WNBA Finals match up ever to go to a fifth and deciding game.

Average attendance for the 2006 Finals was up +28% compared to a year ago while average attendance for the playoffs overall increased by +16%. The historic Game 5 featured a sellout crowd of 19,671 at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, MI, the second largest crowd in WNBA Finals history. These increases followed closely on the heels of a strong second half of the regular season in which attendance throughout the league rose nearly 12% after the All-Star break. Television viewership also increased during the Finals. Detroit's Game 4 win at Sacramento was the second-most watched WNBA game in ESPN2 history and average viewership for the 2006 Finals was up +11% over that of 2005. As the preeminent women's sports league, the WNBA, which features 13 teams, is the destination for the best women's basketball players in the world.