ESPN viewers have long been ready for some football. Now they will be getting more of a chance to watch a different take on the sport.

ESPN and Women’s National Football Conference have expanded their rights deal with a new two-year pact that will keep the WNFC IX Cup Championship Game on ESPN2 and put the Disney-backed sports-media giant in the mix when it comes to marketing the professional women’s tackle-football league.

“This deal, I think, is significant,” says Odessa “OJ” Jenkins, the league’s founder and CEO, during an interview. The new deal is twice as long as an initial one-year pact between the league and ESPN, she says, and will have ESPN executives working on innovative marketing and promotional ideas. What’s more, there appears to be some potential to make use of the broader ESPN portfolio, including the NFL Network, newly acquired as part of an investment in ESPN by the NFL, to help burnish WNFC.

Under terms of the deal, the league’s Championship Game will air live on ESPN2 on Sunday, June 21, from Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, the 12,000-seat stadium and practice home of the Dallas Cowboys.

“We want to bring in the right people, bring more power and influence to this league,” Jenkins says. “And I think ESPN is where we are looking to grow.” WNFC has a partnership with the streaming platform Victory+ and a slate of sponsors that includes Dove, Ridell and Adidas.

ESPN has put more focus on women’s sports in recent years, and this summer will replace the long-running “Sunday Night Baseball” with “Women’s Sports Sundays,” a showcase for WNBA and NWSL matches. Jenkins hopes there might be some room on the new  program to call attention to WNFC, too.

ESPN sees a chance to help win a broader audience to an emerging sport, says Susie Piotrowski, vice president of women’s sports programming at ESPN, during a recent interview. “The audience is there. When we platformed the WNFC championship game on ESPN2 it was the most watched program” on the network that day, she says. “We continue to show that if you make new sports available and you make it accessible” they will find new viewers.

The WNFC is made up of 16 teams across the United States, and features players including Leilani Caamal of the Golden State Storm, a new expansion team that made its debut this season; Kassidy Snowdy of the Kansas City Glory; Maria Jackson of the Texas Elite Spartans; Ashley Clark of the Washington Prodigy; and Michelle Angel, the league’s top quarterback, who also plays for the Texas team.

“The more people that find out about us, the more people that love it,” says Jenkins of the league’s fan base. Seven years ago, before a recent boom of interest in women’s sports, finding new audiences “wasn’t as easy.”  Now, with other women’s leagues gaining new traction, “people can see what women are capable of, which has completely changed the attitude of fans.” She finds that the growth of flag football has helped boost interest in a professional women’s tackle football league as well,

“Once people find out it exists, it’s actually pretty easy,” she says, to turn them into more durable fans.