The WNBA has not yet announced the official draft date which is a shame, since it is a month away now. Yet, over the two months, thanks to knowledgeable fans who did the research, the WNBA draft date is April 13th 2017 starting at 7 pm on ESPN2.
UPDATE: (March 13th) The WNBA Draft is officially April 13th, confirmed by two people with knowledge. However, the WNBA Draft does NOT have a location set yet, meaning the Mohegan Sun arena is out. It could be either at the ESPN studios or in New York. Check back later on this post.
If you have heard that the draft is on April 10th, you are wrong. I have listed two pieces of information that will make it clear to you that the draft indeed will be April 13th.
The first piece of information is clear. ESPN2 has it’s programming schedule set for April 13th. As you can see, below it has the draft scheduled for 7 to 8 pm on ESPN2. Don’t believe me? Take a look yourself.
If you follow this link http://espnmediazone.com/us/programming/program-schedules/#tvl_resultsAnchor, and click on April 13th, for a live event on ESPN2, you will see the WNBA Draft pop up. Also, the WNBA draft will continue from 8 pm to 9 pm on ESPNU afterwards.
Another piece of information is listed right here in the Odyssey Sims article, which clearly states..”The WNBA Draft will take place on April 13th.” http://www.wnba.com/news/sparks-acquire-odyssey-sims-trade-wings/ right on the WNBA official website itself!
I’m not sure why the league STILL has not made it official. This is NOT how the WNBA should operate. The draft date should be open three months before. So, spread the word and let everyone know for those who didn’t know before. The official draft date is April 13th 2017. The San Antonio Stars hold the #1 pick.
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You do a lot of complaining but have no idea how a professional league actually works. They haven’t announced it yet because there are still other factors that need to be hammered out before an official announcement. Announcing randomly in articles is one thing but to put out an actual press release is another. They have to get the green light from ESPN before they can do a press release. They have a contract that actually states this. It kills me how there are so many of you that complain about all of the things that the league is doing wrong when you have not seen contracts with other companies.
Not to mention that the WNBA website is not even operated or updated by WNBA staff. They actually have to put in request to Turner Sports to get updates done on the website, and these go into a que and are handled on a numbered and priority basis.
Hi Anna, thanks for the response. Thanks for clearing it up. It gets ffrustrating to deal with, especially when you have so many passionate fans/writers/bloggers who don’t understand why the league operates this slowly. Thanks for the reasons why.
Well, Anna, they could help us a lot by actually explaining it like you have here. We would love to pass on some of the information to help us fans understand the complexity of running the league. We can’t even get out of some teams whether the contract is multi-year or training camp.
I do think that team press releases could be better, there is no excuse for that lol!
Unfortunately the league, like other leagues get their hands tied. And the WNBA is a small league in comparison to the other leagues so the trickle down effect is major. The leagues that make these companies the most money get the priority. So lets say the WNBA has 10 web updates it needs but then breaking news on one of Turner Sports other areas happens…. unfortunately the WNBA usually will get bumped for that because of the coverage. the sponsors, the money. The same goes with ESPN. TV contracts are crazy when you see everything they entail because it usually can mess up other schedules by trying to accommodate what ESPN wants/needs. Though we want a lot more coverage on ESPN, tv contracts are the most handcuffing of all contracts in sports media
I’m a IT professional myself and assumed that this was exactly what the Turner contract entailed. My local team ended up creating an additional website for anything they needed faster action or control over then referring the WNBA page. The WNBA could choose to use other social media to give us data and they choose not to. For example, an actual twitter feed for transactions. And someone tweeting out the draft picks as they are made. Last year, the website crashed and the only way I knew was by watching podium cam and tweeting it out myself.
I wish the teams could create additional websites, but that would go directly against the contract with Turner. However, there are most likely other ways around this, like you mentioned, social media, etc. However, I believe that the WNBA social isn’t ran by a WNBA staff person, they share a team with the NBA… so you know who gets priority. (Team social media is ran through the teams though)
There are some things the league could do to step up it’s marketing game, especially digital marketing, but at the same time being with Turner sports also puts a damper on A LOT of things because Turner has a lot of control that they aren’t willing to give up. And a lot of things that they (the league, Turner, and ESPN) all have agreements on what can and cannot be put on social.
I wish that ALL of the teams would step up and really put forth some effort into their social media as well. (Even though several teams share their digital marketing department with their NBA counterparts, so the WNBA tends to fall by the wayside.)
I do feel like if the WNBA brought their web and social in house and had their own staff that the website, the social, and the digital marketing in general would be 110% better. But unfortunately that is not happening any time in the near future.
I’ve said this before: the WNBA is a sports league. It is an entertainment league whose entertainment is sports. They do not provide the details that would allow the typical sports fanatic to debate and obsess over their team during the off-season. Part of the fun in any real sports league is watching a player during their free-agent year and how they perform, thinking about whether they might be there or not the next year. And, starting the debate as soon as the season is over about the team make-up for the next season. None of this is possible in the WNBA except for a 4th year player coming off a rookie contract. They are not bound to release whether a player is injured or not so we only find out about issues when the player goes in for post-season surgery. And, the website is so full of inaccuracies that I have been forced to come up with my own spreadsheet. Bad data is worse than no data. Honestly, the WNBA leadership thinks their product is so good that people who try it will stay but the people who stay for the basketball also expect information, and failing to provide that is driving me away.
The fact that the WNBA is still so dependent on the NBA is a big problem for the WNBA. The league sharing staff, teams sharing staff, the NBA will always take precedence over the WNBA. The NBA makes more money on tv revenue, merchandise, advertisers, sponsors, etc. So the staff is putting more time and effort into keeping NBA stats and data up to par and covering the DLeague and Summer League more than they do the WNBA. The league has to keep its money spenders happy.
If the WNBA had it’s own independent staff you would see a big difference in how things are.
I’d love to know more about how you were able to find all of this out. Do you work for Turner? Is the information online somewhere?
No, the information is not online. I have worked for 2 different sports leagues and still working for one of them
Well, thanks for explaining why the league is set the way it is. Still frustrating to deal with. I guess we are stuck with slow release of information. Sigh.
The team PR’s (the ones that actually have their own PR people) could be releasing press releases more often. But that is a team level problem, not a league problem.
And some of the reasons that the draft hasn’t been announced yet is because there wasn’t a venue secured so they needed to secure the venue before making an announcement