The Worldwide Chief has re-upped with its lead ladies’s basketball commentator Rebecca Lobo on a multi-year deal.
A de facto transactional freeze within the WNBA caused by the continued collective bargaining settlement negotiations hasn’t stopped ESPN from conserving on potential free agent off the board.
Per a report from Austin Karp of Sports activities Enterprise Journal, the Worldwide Chief has re-upped with Rebecca Lobo on a multi-year deal. Lobo, 52, has lengthy been stationed because the lead shade commentator for the community’s greatest ladies’s basketball video games on each the collegiate {and professional} stage and can preserve reprising that position.
“I’ve been with them all through an extended interval of progress for the sport of girls’s basketball,” Lobo stated in Karp’s report. “Any of us who’re concerned in it are simply thrilled with the best way the game has grown, particularly over the course of the final couple of years.”
Lobo is likely one of the unique stars of the WNBA, allotted to the primary version of the New York Liberty in 1997 after her embellished profession at UConn and a gold medal run with the 1996 United States ladies’s nationwide workforce on the Atlanta Olympics. Following a seven-year profession, which additionally featured stops with the Houston Comets and Connecticut Solar, Lobo was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2017. She has additionally been enshrined within the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame and the No. 50 she wore with the Huskies and Liberty has been honored by each each franchises.
Lobo has been stationed at ESPN for many years and has referred to as essentially the most outstanding newbie {and professional} video games on the Worldwide Chief’s schedule. She has held some type of position in all however two editions of ESPN’s protection of the WNBA Finals since 2005 and has referred to as the final 15 as shade commentator. She has routinely been paired with play-by-play man Ryan Ruocco and sideline reporter Holly Rowe, forming one of many longest broadcasting groupings in skilled sports activities broadcasting.
Regardless of some potential scores shortcomings (i.e. Caitlin Clark’s damage, the early elimination of the defending champion Liberty), Lobo and ESPN loved a sterling season on the airwaves. This previous common season and postseason was essentially the most watched on the ESPN household of networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2). The opening sport of the 2025 Finals between Las Vegas and Phoenix was considered by a median of 1.9 million, making it essentially the most watched Recreation 1 since Lobo’s Liberty did battle with the Comets within the inaugural version in 1997.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
