The Worldwide Leader has re-upped with its lead women’s basketball commentator Rebecca Lobo on a multi-year deal.
A de facto transactional freeze in the WNBA brought about by the ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations hasn’t stopped ESPN from keeping on potential free agent off the board.
Per a report from Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the Worldwide Leader has re-upped with Rebecca Lobo on a multi-year deal. Lobo, 52, has long been stationed as the lead color commentator for the network’s biggest women’s basketball games on both the collegiate and professional level and will keep reprising that role.
“I’ve been with them throughout a long period of growth for the game of women’s basketball,” Lobo said in Karp’s report. “Any of us who are involved in it are just thrilled with the way the sport has grown, especially over the course of the last couple of years.”
Lobo is one of the original stars of the WNBA, allocated to the first edition of the New York Liberty in 1997 after her decorated career at UConn and a gold medal run with the 1996 United States women’s national team at the Atlanta Olympics. Following a seven-year career, which also featured stops with the Houston Comets and Connecticut Sun, Lobo was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017. She has also been enshrined in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the No. 50 she wore with the Huskies and Liberty has been honored by both both franchises.
Lobo has been stationed at ESPN for decades and has called the most prominent amateur and professional games on the Worldwide Leader’s schedule. She has held some sort of role in all but two editions of ESPN’s coverage of the WNBA Finals since 2005 and has called the last 15 as color commentator. She has routinely been paired with play-by-play man Ryan Ruocco and sideline reporter Holly Rowe, forming one of the longest broadcasting groupings in professional sports broadcasting.
Despite some potential ratings shortcomings (i.e. Caitlin Clark’s injury, the early elimination of the defending champion Liberty), Lobo and ESPN enjoyed a sterling season on the airwaves. This past regular season and postseason was the most watched on the ESPN family of networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2). The opening game of the 2025 Finals between Las Vegas and Phoenix was viewed by an average of 1.9 million, making it the most watched Game 1 since Lobo’s Liberty did battle with the Comets in the inaugural edition in 1997.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
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