WNBA draft lottery set for Nov. 15 with Houston and Toronto tied at 32.9%

A 30-minute show on ESPN

The 2027 WNBA draft lottery will be broadcast on Sunday, Nov. 15, from 7:30 to 8 p.m. ET on ESPN, the league announced. The 30-minute special follows the UConn-Louisville women's basketball game, and TSN will carry the event in Canada. It is the 15th consecutive year ESPN has presented the lottery.

The format is a television show rather than a press release: WNBA head of league operations Bethany Donaphin will reveal the results on air. That matters for how the news reaches fans, because the order of the top picks will be known within the broadcast rather than through a later statement.

Six teams, and two traded picks

Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Toronto and Washington will take part in the 26th annual lottery. Two of those entries come from trades: Phoenix previously sent its first-round pick to Los Angeles, and Chicago sent its first-round selection to Washington in the deal that brought Ariel Atkins to the Sky.

The 2027 WNBA Draft is scheduled for April 12, which gives the lottery winner roughly five months between learning its position and using it. That gap is normal for the league, and it is why the lottery is treated as a standalone event rather than a draft-week story. Our report on the Game 6 ticket prices covers the Finals market this week.

The lottery also matters for teams that are not in it. The 2027 draft order below the lottery is set by record, and the trades that moved Phoenix and Chicago picks happened months ago, which means two franchises will spend Nov. 15 watching selections they already control.

Houston and Toronto at 329 combinations each

Odds for five of the seven non-playoff teams are based on two-year cumulative records from 2025 and 2026; Portland and Toronto, expansion teams in 2026, are measured on this past season alone. Houston's and Toronto's winning percentages came out identical at .250, so each receives 329 combinations out of 1,000.

The tiebreak matters as much as the odds. Houston went 1-2 against Toronto in the 2026 regular season, which is the first tiebreaker, so Houston cannot fall below the third pick. Toronto is guaranteed at least the fourth pick. Washington has 161 combinations through Chicago's pick (26-62), Seattle 93, Portland 52, and Los Angeles 24 from its own record plus 12 from Phoenix's.

The percentages are worth translating into simple terms: Houston and Toronto combine for roughly two-thirds of the chance at the top pick, Washington accounts for about one in six, and the remaining three entries share the rest. That distribution is why the tiebreak guarantee is nearly as valuable as the odds themselves.

How the drawing works

The mechanism is the same one the league has used: 14 balls numbered 1 through 14 go into a machine, four are drawn to form a four-digit combination, and the team assigned that combination gets the first pick. The four balls are returned and the process repeats for the second pick.

The remaining order is not drawn. Of the five lottery teams not selected, the one with the worst cumulative winning percentage picks third, then the next worst picks fourth, and so on through seventh. Ernst & Young attends to oversee the process, which is the league's way of answering the obvious question about a drawing held behind closed doors. The Game 4 viewing guide shows how the Finals schedule has moved.

What the top pick is worth

The value of the lottery depends on the class, and the early mock drafts have already put a name at the top. ESPN's first projection lists JuJu Watkins as the No. 1 pick, which is a projection rather than a commitment and can change over a college season.

For Houston and Toronto, the lottery is the start of a longer build. Houston is relocating from Connecticut and carrying a 329-combination stake into a new market; Toronto is an expansion team whose first season produced a .250 record and a guaranteed top-four pick. The broadcast will not decide either franchise, but it sets the order in which they add talent. The 30th-season records story covers the league's wider numbers.

For a league that has spent the past month discussing Finals scheduling and expansion, the lottery is a reminder that roster building continues on a separate calendar. The teams at the bottom of the table in 2026 are planning for April, while the teams still playing are planning for Game 7.

What to watch on Nov. 15

The first thing to watch is whether the tiebreak holds: Houston cannot fall past third and Toronto cannot fall past fourth, so the drama is concentrated in the top two picks. The second is which pick moves: Los Angeles holds two lottery entries, its own and Phoenix's, and the order in which those combinations are drawn matters for how the Sparks use the night.

The third is the reaction of the teams that do not win. A lottery that hands the top pick to a team already holding two entries changes the draft board more than one that follows the odds exactly. The broadcast will show that in 30 minutes, and the rest of the league will spend the next five months planning around it.