Los Angeles Sparks - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

Currently, some Sparks games are broadcast on KDOC-TV (KDOC) and Time Warner Cable Southern California (TWC101), which is are local television station for the area of Los Angeles. The Sparks agreed to a multi-year broadcast deal with TWC in March 2012. More often than not, NBA TV will pick up the feed from the local broadcast, which is shown nationally. Broadcasters for the Sparks games are Larry Burnett and Lisa Leslie. Previously, Sparks games were found on Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket and former analysts have included Derek Fisher and Ann Meyers.

All games (excluding blackout games, which are available on ESPN3.com) are broadcast to the WNBA LiveAccess game feeds on the league website. Furthermore, some Sparks games are broadcast nationally on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. The WNBA has reached an eight year agreement with ESPN, which will pay right fees to the Sparks, as well as other teams in the league.

Currently, the team's games are not on radio; however, the team did bounce around several stations from 1999 to 2008. The first two years had no broadcasts. Then in 1999, the team signed with KWKU, a sister station to Spanish-language KWKW, licensed to Pomona, California. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times published in this period, KWKU had no switchboard and no website. In addition, its 500-watt signal reached only a handful of people in the greater L.A. area and was certainly nowhere near the team's home arenas. In 2003, the team left KWKU for KLAC, which had summer time slots available after the Anaheim Angels' radio broadcasts had just left. That lasted until 2006, when KLAC switched the broadcasts to XETRA, which carried the same format KLAC had before. In 2007, the game broadcasts moved again, this time to KTLK, when XETRA switched its language of broadcasts from English to Spanish. The Sparks and Clear Channel Communications (licensee of the last three stations mentioned) chose not to renew their contract after 2008. Sparks radio broadcasts never covered a complete season; most nationally-televised games and many games from the Eastern time zone were not covered. Burnett was the announcer.