By Kristian Hernández, Senior Editor, Sports Video Group
May 8, 2026
Young broadcaster will deploy 11-camera complement on large chunk of games, ‘At the Line’ scorebug feature for tracking free-throw success
The W may be returning for its 30th-anniversary season, but USA Sports will be covering the top-flight women’s professional basketball league for the first time. Instead of waiting until the postseason to enhance its coverage, Versant Media’s six-month-old network is starting off with a high camera count and an active presence at the arena.
“For the vast majority of its first 30 seasons, the WNBA was a league people had to cover, largely based on existing commitments as NBA television partners,” says Ted Ballard, coordinating producer and director, USA Sports. “In this, our first season of coverage for USA Sports, we can unequivocably say that this is our premiere product and is a league we want to cover.”
Intentional Coverage: ‘We’re Not Tiptoeing Into This’
Long after debuting in 1997, the WNBA is slowly garnering the media attention and televised broadcasts it deserves. Prior to USA Sports’ formal launch last November, the executive team of USA Sports Executive Producer/SVP, Sports Production, Jeff Behnke and President Matt Hong and production personnel like Ballard wanted to pack a punch if the opportunity arose to broadcast these games. As the larger picture became clearer and USA Sports inked an 11-year media-rights deal, the decision was made to have the coverage go all-in from the beginning.
“When we considered this endeavor back in July and Jeff brought me on board,” says Ballard, “our goal was to be great from day one. They have committed the resources to ensuring that we’re not tiptoeing into this.”
The team immediately hit the drawing board and asked the important questions. If we’re being intentional with our coverage, who will call these games? With pregame, halftime, and postgame shows a common aspect of each broadcast, what voices will be featured? For enhanced productions out of the gate, what will be the baseline technologies?
The conversations led to opting for full onsite productions instead of hybrid or fully remote models. Along with a newly created graphics and animation package developed with technologies from AL3, SMT, SportRadar, Chyron, and Vizrt and an original theme song composed by respected New York City musician Bob Burke, USA Sports went for more than the bare minimum on workflows.
“Most broadcasts of the WNBA until this point have put out five or six cameras,” notes Ballard. “We’re putting out more cameras than any broadcaster in the regular season. We’re doing everything this league deserves and has deserved for a long time. We’ve assembled a group of amazing people that can support us.”
To better understand the lay of the land, Ballard and his staffers made trips to witness productions of high-profile games firsthand. Most notably, they made the trek to the 2025 WNBA Finals in October at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix.
“We were able to gain significant understandings from ESPN/Disney about how they approached a WNBA Finals, knowing we would be hosting the majority of the games in our first season in 2026,” adds Ballard. “We also had time to meet with league broadcast, PR, and operations folks in person to begin furthering those most important relationships.”
As 2025 came to a close and the early months of 2026 rolled on without any clear end in sight to an impending work stoppage in the WNBA, USA Sports continued on with the idea that a season would still be played. This meant finding crew for their large number of games; intense site surveys to nine separate arenas, including eight WNBA-specific venues, beginning in mid-January; configuring workflows for editing, archiving, and file transfer over a four-month period with technicians at the Network Operations Center in Englewood Cliffs, NJ and NBC Sports’ headquarters in Stamford, CT; and using three days in Chicago and two days in Seattle in mid-April to run through the entire production process offline.
“We flushed out file transfer workflows, engineering and transmission set ups, ENCO music services, and any number of graphics and wrap-around issues,” says Ballard. “These games allowed talent to rehearse as well as gave production teams a chance to practice workflows without the pressure of going to air.”
Live at the Venue: Mobile TV Group Trucks, 11 Cameras
To back up this full-court-press approach, USA Sports decided that being onsite was the only way to elevate the coverage. It will broadcast a staggering 48 regular-season games, a number on the higher end of this season’s broadcasts amongst the league’s current media-rights holders. The strategy will be deployed for the first-round matchups in the WNBA Playoffs and the five games of this year’s WNBA Finals.
Mobile units will be the primary source of production, and Mobile TV Group, mobile-units provider for USA Sports’ first season of League One Volleyball, will be responsible for the onsite-production infrastructure. This partnership was made possible by making sure that budgets were in check, a process led by CFO Kristin Newkirk and Behnke.
“We had to find a mobile-units vendor who was able to deliver the kind of high-quality mobile unit experience we needed at a price that made doing in person productions possible and affordable within our production budget,” says Ballard. “With its vast experience in set/shoot/strike regional sports, Mobile TV Group provided the perfect solution. A team of our top technical and remote executives actually flew to Denver in August to meet with the owner, Nick Garvin, and the management and operations team at MTVG. We outlined our vision for production and it became quickly apparent that they had the fleet of trucks, engineers and equipment perfectly suited to what we were trying to achieve.”
The operation begins with a Mother’s Day nightcap featuring the Las Vegas Aces vs. Los Angeles Sparks at 6 p.m. ET. The 11-camera complement – which will be featured on a substantial portion of this year’s schedule – will include four super-slow-motion cameras, two Fletcher above-the-rim units, a RF handheld, and, to highlight the atmosphere near the floor, DJI Osmo Pocket cameras. With fashion as a way for players to express their personalities off the court, USA Sports will also have cameras dedicated to showcasing the swag and style of the players’ arrival at the arena. Other deployments include miked players for atleast 12 games, cameras focusing on referee reviews, and play breakdowns via Fingerworks telestration. Similarly, Piero will allow for the same execution in the studio. Back in the compound, 12 different 1080p SDR mobile units will be in rotation throughout the season.
With all this technology, as well as a deep commitment to bolstering coverage of the WNBA, the broadcaster aims to influence the sports-video-production industry. “We’re hoping it’s the tide that lifts all ships,” says Ballard. “We want to bring a competitive balance to the six other national broadcasters.”
On the graphics side, viewers at home will be well-informed throughout the broadcast. Games will feature the standard time, score, and statistics of traditional scorebugs, but the design will integrate an “At the Line” element displaying players’ free-throw success.
“We’ll be keeping track of whether they made one of two or two of three — a little detail that fans might take for granted,” says Ballard. “We’re looking to implement a combination of new things while keeping the scorebug as the top priority.”
Scorebug operators will be working remotely out of Mobile TV Group’s Mountain Media Center in Centennial, CO and will tap into SMT’s onsite technology inside of the mobile units.
Straight From the Source: On-Air Team of WNBA Vets and Players
Fans will be treated to on-air talent with a high-level understanding of the game. An important step forward for USA Sports’ involvement in the WNBA as well as for coverage of the league as a whole, the broadcaster’s dedicated studio programming will have a significant presence during this season of the W. In the studio, the pre/postgame and halftime show will include Emmy Award–winning host Elle Duncan and analysts Renee Montgomery, a two-time WNBA Champion, and Chamique Holdsclaw, who will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in August. Courtside reporters Paris Lawson, Amy Audibert, and Edona Thaqi will also contribute this season. On selected games, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham will join the crew as well.
“The goal from day one has been to build something that feels premium, contemporary, and fully invested in the WNBA as a major property,” says Beth Chappell, supervising studio producer, WNBA. “It’s not simply a studio show around games, but a true franchise that reflects where the league is right now and where it is headed.”
The secret sauce is a balanced list of respected WNBA voices and both former and current players, who have lived through the nuances of the game.
“Creatively, the approach is to balance basketball intelligence with accessibility, personality, and culture,” adds Chappell. “We want diehard fans to feel respected while also welcoming newer viewers who may be discovering the league in a deeper way for the first time. The WNBA is elite basketball first, but it also lives at the intersection of athleticism, fashion, social awareness, music, and cultural relevance. That gives us a much richer canvas as producers. We can talk pick-and-roll coverage, roster construction, and late-game execution, but we can also talk about who these players are, what they represent, how they show up, and why they connect so deeply with fans.”
Working in tandem with Studio Director Liz Donovan, the show will emanate from NBC Sports’ Studio 3 in Stamford. Along with opening night, studio shows will be included on 15 doubleheader nights throughout the season which will primarily on Wednesdays. First-round playoff coverage will stick in Stamford before heading onsite for the championship series.
“The space allows us to create multiple presentation environments within one show — from traditional desk conversation to LED-driven storytelling, live game integration, graphics-rich analysis, social elements, and more conversational areas that feel organic and personality-driven,” continues Chappell. “One of the great advantages of working out of Stamford is the flexibility and scale of the facility. It is built for major live sports production, with centralized control rooms, advanced HDR workflows, extensive LED integration, and the kind of technical backbone that has supported some of the biggest events in the world. We are able to take that same production muscle and apply it to a WNBA studio show that needs to be fast, polished, visual, and responsive to the moment.
Calling the action will be the expert voices of play-by-play announcers Kate Scott, Meghan McPeak, and Carlan Gay; analysts Sarah Kustok, National Basketball Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings, Amy Audibert, Lea B. Olsen,and Edona Thaqi; and the courtside-reporting trio of Terrika Foster-Brasby, Lawson, and Thaqi.
The commentary team brings lots of experience: Scott serves as lead play-by-play voice of the Philadelphia 76ers on NBC Sports Philadelphia; McPeak served as sideline reporter for the Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics, and Capital City Go-Go on Monumental Sports Network; Kustok is lead analyst for Brooklyn Nets’ broadcasts on YES Network; and Audibert is a radio and studio television analyst for the Miami Heat.
The pedigree of this star-studded team and a motivated crew behind the scenes place USA Sports in an advantageous position for success, but providing a platform for the WNBA and its athletes is the broadcaster’s main focus.
“Women’s sports oftentimes don’t get the coverage they deserve because companies are not willing to put that much money and the resources behind them,” says Scott, “but USA Sports said, ‘We’re coming in hot and doing this from the jump because we’re lucky to be joining this league as it’s exploding.’ Who I was going to be working with was a big part of [my joining USA Sports], but how we were going to be covering this league this year and for years moving forward was also a big reason I said yes.”
In addition, Chappell feels a seismic shift in USA Sports’ WNBA coverage as well. In a career that’s included Olympics and FIFA Men’s and Women’s World Cups to more than 20 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championships, multiple WNBA seasons, and the Women’s College World Series, there’s a buzz in the air heading into this weekend.
“After nearly three decades producing and overseeing some of the biggest events in sports, this launch genuinely feels different,” she says. “I’ve been fortunate to help shape coverage around some of the most meaningful moments in global sports, but there is a unique energy surrounding the WNBA right now that feels both earned and sustainable.”
Let’s Hit the Road: Crew Feels Excitement for First Trip to Los Angeles
The production and operations crews have been hard at work to put the final touches on their plans. Operationally, the operations crew setting up the broadcast foundation is SVP, Sports Technical Operations, Steve Fastook; VP, Remote Production & Operations, Rex Humbard; and Senior Director, Remote Technical Operations, Matt Hogencamp.
Looking ahead in the schedule, the league’s best teams and players will square off on USA
Sports. These regular-season battles will eventually conclude in the presentation of the WNBA Championship Trophy, which could be done on USA Sports.
“We have had discussions with both the league and internally about several ideas for the Finals and will announce our plans as we draw closer to the postseason,” says Ballard. “We will certainly be adding to our already robust resources when the time comes to cover the league’s most important games.
Although there are months in between Sunday’s tip-off and the final games of the season, the entire USA Sports family is raring to go on their first season of the WNBA.
“This is an ‘all hands on deck’ endeavor across marketing, promotions, programming, operations, engineering and production,” continues Ballard. “We could not be more excited about the possibility of crowning a champion for this league on USA Network.”
After the season debut on Mother’s Day, USA Sports will broadcast 47 other regular-season games: six in May, 13 in June, 10 in July, nine in August, and nine in September.
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