NCAA, ESPN reach broadcast deal for championships that creates women's basketball payouts

Less than a year after the NCAA women's basketball tournament, softball and women's volleyball championships all drew record-breaking television ratings, the NCAA has a new media rights deal to broadcast its postseason sports outside of the Bowl Subdivision football and the men's basketball tournament. 

And while the deal is significantly more than the last, it’s also considerably less than some were expecting. 

The NCAA announced an agreement Thursday with ESPN that will cover 40 of its championships throughout the U.S. — 21 women’s events and 19 men’s — that is worth a reported $920 million over eight years, or $115 million per year, according to Sports Business Journal. 

The new deal is worth almost three times the current contract, which checks in at about $40 million annually. 

While it’s certainly a major step forward — ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro called it “unprecedented” and new NCAA president Charlie Baker praised ESPN’s commitment to women’s sports in particular — it is significantly less than studies have shown it was worth. 

In 2021, after inequities at the men’s and women’s tournaments were detailed on social media by some of the top women’s players in the country, the NCAA commissioned a report to study the difference in the value of men’s and women’s sports. The Kaplan Report found that the NCAA significantly undervalues women's basketball. It encouraged the organization to break out women’s basketball separately from all the other championships, estimating that women’s hoops alone was worth $81 to $112 million. Instead, women’s basketball will stay with all the other NCAA championships under the ESPN umbrella. 

It also remains well behind the NCAA men's basketball tournament rights that have been sold to CBS and TNT through 2032 in a deal that is worth $873 million this year. The final eight years of agreement that was signed in 2016 will average more than $1 billion.

In a major change, Baker told reporters during a conference call Thursday that the NCAA plans to implement a unit distribution package in women’s basketball, similar to the one that’s existed in the men's tournament. 

In that scenario, teams that advance during the women's tournament will get a cut of the $65 million earmarked for women’s hoops in the package. Baker said he didn’t have details or a timeline yet for women’s basketball distribution. 

As for why women’s basketball wasn’t sold as a separate entity, Baker said it was “very important to us that we get what I would describe as the best deal for the most number of sports.” He stressed that ESPN has been “a terrific partner” in the rapid growth of women’s sports popularity, particularly with women’s basketball, and that he thinks that partnership is crucial to continued growth. 

Baker also pushed back on the notion that women’s basketball wasn’t being treated fairly or well with this new package. He said the unit distribution proves that there’s a “demonstrated effort (by the NCAA) to treat it differently.” 

The agreement begins Sept. 1, 2024. According to a release from the NCAA it includes exclusive coverage of all rounds of the women’s basketball, softball and volleyball tournaments, plus gymnastics, baseball and Championship Subdivision football. It adds coverage of men’s and women’s tennis team championships and the men’s gymnastics championship. Additionally, it includes full rights for the men's National Invitational Tournament, Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament and international rights for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

According to most recently available NCAA audited financial statement, the association is scheduled to get $47,045,000 from ESPN for the 2023-24 fiscal year (this school year).

“Obviously this feels really exciting, because it’s triple the deal before,” Lindsay Gottlieb, whose Southern California team is ranked No. 6 in the USA TODAY Sports women's basketball coaches poll, told USA TODAY Sports. “My question would be, what’s the ceiling (for women’s basketball specifically)? How can we put an accurate value on something that’s growing so fast right now? And in a year or two, are we going to say it’s being undervalued (by this deal)?”

Ed Desser, one of the media analysts who authored the Kaplan Report, told USA TODAY Sports he thought the NCAA would break women’s basketball out separately, but “reading between the lines, they’ve got this big amorphous package and while there is recognition that women’s basketball is worth quite a bit more than they were getting before, I think the sheer scale of the other programming was such that they chose not to.” 

Desser added that the new deal clearly does prove that the NCAA championships package had previously been undervalued, adding that “I think it’s still a very good deal for ESPN.” 

Also of note: Just in the last year, the media landscape has changed drastically, with more Americans canceling cable and scaling back on streaming services, and entertainment companies feeling the pinch. Desser said given that change, even a year ago there might have been “more interest in breaking things up.”

Iowa coach Lisa Bluder, whose Hawkeyes played for the national title last year behind All-American guard Caitlin Clark, said there’s no question that the package is different than what many expected. But that doesn’t mean she’s unhappy with it. 

“To have $65 million of this designated for just women’s basketball, that’s a big step up,” Bluder told USA TODAY Sports. She added that women’s basketball should be proud that its growth has led to the women’s game being given the responsibility to “hopefully help carry those other sports.” She was also thrilled to hear about unit distribution. 

“Distribution is so important, and it’s important that we get it in women’s basketball because we’ve had it in the men’s game for a long time. It’s the right thing to do,” Bluder said. “But (schools) need to invest in women’s sports at all levels — it can’t just be the 68 teams (that make the NCAA tournament).” 

Contributing: Steve Berkowitz