The NCAA said Thursday it has reached an eight-year deal worth $115 million per year with ESPN to broadcast 40 college sports championships each year, including what many in the college athletics world hope will lead to a larger edition of Division I women’s basketball. championship. Given the recent wave of popularity, the returns are high.
The $920 million deal ends years of speculation and debate over how the NCAA capitalizes on the massive fan base of women’s sports, including basketball. Powerful teams like South Carolina and UConn, as well as star players like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Sabrina Ionescu, have a lot less interest in this revenue than men’s college basketball and college The sport of football generates higher expectations, while men’s college basketball and college football receive much higher investment from colleges and universities. Media companies have been around for nearly a century.
The NCAA’s current contract with ESPN, which was renewed in 2011 and runs through the end of this season, brings in $34 million annually and includes 29 championships. A 2021 report, commissioned amid complaints about stark disparities between the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, suggested the women’s tournament could earn at least $81 million in the first year of a new deal – If only it were sold individually and not like other teams. It’s part of a package deal – although the estimate is met with some skepticism from industry experts about its ambitions.
Ultimately, the NCAA and ESPN agreed to keep the bundle and part of the deal valued the women’s basketball tournament at about $65 million per year.
NCAA president Charlie Baker acknowledged in an interview that simply selling women’s basketball isn’t feasible given the realities of the market.
“We’ve said from the beginning that we want to get the best deal for all of our championships,” Baker told Competitor. “During this negotiation, we had a lot of informal conversations with a lot of other potential participants, but the person who was constantly engaged throughout the entire negotiation process and who I think was the most enthusiastic was ESPN.
“The way they’ve handled the negotiations shows that this is very important to them and it’s still part of their portfolio. I think they’re going to be a great partner moving forward here.”
Last year, LSU and coach Kim Mulkey won the NCAA women’s basketball championship game, breaking ratings records. (Kirby Lee/USA Today)
New deal does not include lucrative Class A men’s basketball tournament; Paramount Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery Channel are paying nearly $900 million annually to broadcast the game on CBS and Turner cable networks, in a deal that expires Long-term agreement until 2032. The new NCAA-ESPN contract also expires in 2032, which will give Baker said the NCAA will be more flexible in subsequent media rights negotiations. (The NCAA does not control Football Bowl Subdivision playoff rights, and the College Football Playoff handles its own negotiations and controls its own revenue.)
The new deal, set to begin Sept. 1, includes guarantees that the annual women’s basketball, women’s volleyball and women’s gymnastics national championship games will be broadcast on ABC.
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What does the NCAA’s new media rights deal mean for women’s college basketball?
Many prominent women’s basketball coaches, including South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, have advocated for the NCAA to spin off the tournament into a separate media deal, much like it does with the men’s basketball tournament.
Last season, the women’s championship game aired on ABC for the first time and attracted 9.9 million viewers, the largest audience ever for a men’s or women’s college game on ESPN+. Overall viewership grew by 55 percent, and the sport’s stars—players and coaches—became household names. Many inside and outside women’s basketball expected the deal to reflect the sport’s recent significant growth, removing it from a package shared with dozens of other sports.
“This should happen,” Staley said in March. “We’re at a place where there’s a lot of demand. I do believe women’s basketball can stand on its own and be a huge revenue-generating sport, in a way, like men’s basketball is for all the other sports, all the other Olympic sports and That’s what women’s basketball does.
“This is slowly happening because the numbers are there to prove it.”
Media consultants for NCAA Endeavor’s WME and IMG Sports said their financial models value the women’s basketball tournament at $65 million per year, more than half of the $115 million in new contracts. Hillary Mandel, executive vice president and head of media for the Americas at IMG, and Karen Brodkin, executive vice president and co-head of WME Sports, said they began by evaluating opportunities in individual sports and sports markets. Prepare for NCAA negotiations. 40-sport package.
“At the end of the day, you have to find a deal that suits your goals and objectives and not spin it off because everyone is saying to you: ‘Split it off! Unbundle it! Hey, that’s a really cool thing!'” Mandel said . “Let’s not get lost in the content of the conversation.”
Brodkin said the two sides began serious talks in late October and completed the deal during ESPN’s exclusive negotiating window, which means the NCAA will not take its championship bundle to the open market for a potential bidding war. She said ESPN’s financial investment, existing infrastructure and the “tremendous production volume” the network has invested in online and streaming platforms make it the NCAA’s best opportunity. As part of the deal, more than 2,300 hours of tournament play each year will be broadcast on ESPN’s linear and digital platforms, along with selections from 10 sports.
“In a fragmented world, it’s important for us to retain exclusivity,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said.
Thursday’s news is another turning point for women’s college basketball — though reactions are expected to be mixed. The tournament itself is worth more than 10 times its previous estimate of $6 million to $7 million per year under the current contract, but its unique value has yet to be fully tested. Still, increased revenue from the women’s basketball tournament and a new valuation of $65 million set the stage for future changes in the sport.
Baker said the NCAA will explore the idea of rewarding women’s basketball teams for success in the NCAA tournament through revenue sharing units, a system used in men’s basketball to reward conferences and universities for strong tournament performance. The NCAA said the Division I Board of Directors Finance Committee began discussions on this in 2023 and will have more discussions with its member universities this year.
“This event has grown significantly due to the hard work of so many student-athletes, coaches, schools and NCAA and ESPN staff,” Baker said. “Hopefully we can find a way to make that happen.”
Currently, only men’s NCAA tournament teams earn units through promotion. Each team that qualifies for the tournament earns a unit for its conference, with additional units up for grabs based on tournament wins. Total revenue from the tournament unit is donated to the conference of the team that earned the unit and distributed to the university over six years, and it comes from a portion of the revenue brought in each year from the tournament itself. In the past, the women’s championship has not brought in enough revenue to justify setting aside funds for the unit system.
Women’s college basketball reached a major moment during the 2021 NCAA Tournament, where unequal treatment between men and women became apparent. While industry insiders have known for years that the NCAA favored men’s basketball to the detriment of other sports, a TikTok post by then-Oregon State center Sedona Prince sparked broader outrage and Momentum for change.
@sedonerrr It’s now 2021, and we’re still fighting for every little bit of equality. #ncaa #inequality #fightforchange
♬ Original Sound – Prince of Sedona
In Prince’s tweet, which has racked up 12.3 million views, the college star pointed out fundamental inequalities, highlighting key differences between the women’s and men’s tournaments in terms of food provided to teams, access to the weight room and even giveaway bags. Players and coaches have also been vocal about other aspects that suggest athletes are being treated differently, such as having 68 teams in the men’s division and 64 in the women’s division, and the use of “crazy” words only in men’s tournaments. March” brand.
Within a week of Prince’s tweet, the NCAA hired law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fink LLP to conduct an independent equity review of the NCAA. In August 2021, the company released a 117-page evaluation report (commonly known as the “Kaplan Report”) covering the NCAA’s gender equality in basketball championships. The Kaplan report recommended that the NCAA keep the women’s basketball tournament separate from other sports, which would mean higher valuations, and the report said the NCAA put different people in charge of organizing the tournament without properly considering whether they were comparable. made a difference.
Baker and the NCAA’s media rights adviser said they evaluated all possible options, including going to the open market and trying to sell a separate women’s basketball tournament package, but chose against it.
“If the market proves to us and Endeavor that it’s worth it, we will absolutely do it,” Baker said.
Many industry experts told Competitor Over the past year, it has made the most sense for the NCAA to preserve the women’s tournament in partnership with ESPN, a partner that broadcasts much of the sport’s regular season and therefore has an incentive to cover the sport in the run-up to the postseason event. Brodkin said there was no better option than tripling the current deal amount, short of increasing investment in production, marketing and storytelling while airing more games on ABC.
“Splits for the sake of spins — you have to figure out who and how to do more of that?” Brodkin said.
The women’s championship game aired on ABC for the first time last season, and ESPN announced in October that it would air again on ABC this season — albeit not in prime time. It’s possible more women’s sports events will be shown on ABC or in better windows as both sides agree to meet regularly to consider changes to maximize visibility for events in need.
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NCAA secures media rights deal for women’s college basketball…but now the real work begins
(Top photo: C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
