Warner Bros. Discovery leans into sports media trend with first-ever USWNT altcast

The GIST: Following parent company Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) decision to add live men’s sports to HBO in October, revamped WBD-owned channel TruTV and Max — HBO’s streamer announced their first-ever USWNT alternative telecast (aka altcast) yesterday. LFG.

How it works: An altcast refers to an alternative feed of a live sports game that features studio coverage and commentary, often from journalists and/or retired athletes. The Manning brothers sparked the trend with their “ManningCast,” while the NFL’s animated broadcasts and ESPN’s March Madness megacast starring WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi are also popular examples.

The USWNT Altcast: WBD will host a special U.S. Soccer Altcast: Men in Blazers’ The Women’s Game during the USWNT’s July 16th friendly against Costa Rica. The altcast, which inked Marriott’s SpringHill Suites as a presenting sponsor, will air on Max and TruTV, both of which have leveled up their sports programming in the last year.

• The altcast, which will be the first on linear TV involving the USWNT, has tapped retired world champ Sam Mewis and Men In Blazers (MIB) founder Roger Bennett to host. Mewis joined MIB as editor-in-chief of its women’s soccer vertical “The Women’s Game” in January.

• Before becoming EIC, Mewis led MIB’s 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup coverage by hosting daily podcasts and livestreams. She drew more than 2.5M total viewers on Twitch and helped grow MIB’s social following by 25% during that tournament alone. That’s who.

Max: Last October, WBD announced that live sports would be coming to Max via the conglomerate’s existing properties, Bleacher Report and TNT, whose existing content lineups included the NBA, MLB, and NHL, as well as men’s March Madness.

• The Max deal also contains coverage of the U.S. men’s and women’s national soccer teams, including this year’s SheBelieves Cup.

TruTV: Founded in 1991, the linear channel originally shared true crime content under its former name, Court TV. The channel was acquired by Time Warner in 2006, when it began airing a rotation of comedy reruns and reality shows.

• Now, TruTv is a hub for live sports. TNT Sports branding will be used across the network this year as it airs an estimated 1K hours of sports programming and plans to expand coverage even more next year.

Zooming out: A concern with celebrity-driven altcasts is the drop following the novelty effect — something the ManningCast, whose first season peaked at 1.96M viewers, experienced in subsequent years, struggling to land 1M in 2023.

• That said, the fandom for MIB and Mewis is built different: According to a recent MIB survey, women’s soccer fans tend to support individual players rather than teams, and Mewis is still at the top of that game.

• Women’s sports fans are famously loyal, and their altcasts will likely fare better because of it. Bird and Taurasi’s women’s March Madness final altcast drew 1.4M viewers, the most for the championship game in the show’s three-year history, making it the second most-watched altcast for a college event on ESPN. Can’t help it.