ESPN, the Disney-owned international sports broadcaster, has renewed its rights to air Athletes Unlimited (AU), the US network of professional women’s sports leagues, for another three years.
The new deal will see the broadcaster continue to exclusively air over 50 AU games across all four of its sports – basketball, softball, lacrosse, and volleyball – per year across its platforms, while all 24 games of AU’s basketball and volleyball leagues will be shown on the ESPN+ streaming service and ESPNU cable channel.
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As part of the agreement, ESPN’s free-to-air sister channel ABC will broadcast at least one AU Softball League championship series game in 2026 – the first time a women’s pro softball game will be shown on network television in the US.
Athletes Unlimited was founded in 2020 with the launch of a professional softball league and has since introduced professional volleyball, lacrosse, and basketball leagues.
The inaugural season was shown worldwide on the Olympic Channel.
ESPN has held the rights to AU games since 2022, when it agreed a two-year agreement covering softball and lacrosse. That year, US networks CBS and Fox held rights to AU’s basketball and volleyball leagues.
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By GlobalDataESPN then added AU’s volleyball league for the 2023 season, before gaining the basketball league during the broadcaster’s last renewal in February 2024, completing the full AU rights set.
The broadcaster said its renewal follows record viewership figures for college sports, with the 2025 Women’s College World Series final between Texas and Texas Tech averaging 2.2 million across ESPN’s networks.
The new rights agreement also comes five months after the men’s Major League Baseball announced it was making a strategic investment in the AU Softball League, marking the first time the league has invested in a professional softball competition.
The stake is reportedly for more than 20% and was struck on the back of US women’s sports experiencing a major surge in popularity and appeal in recent years.
At the time, Kim Ng, commissioner of the AUSL, said: “This is a watershed moment for women’s sports and especially for softball.
“MLB’s investment will supercharge our efforts to build the sustainable professional league this sport has long deserved and sends a powerful message about the value of female athletes and the importance of creating professional opportunities for them.”
