NCAA moving closer to financially rewarding women’s basketball teams that reach March Madness

Women’s basketball teams are about to move a step closer to getting financially rewarded for success in the NCAA Tournament.

The Division I Board of Directors was expected to meet Tuesday and introduce a proposal to give performance units to teams that make March Madness. Units represent revenue.

“Unless something very odd happens, and I don’t expect that it will, the finance committees have already signed off on creating a units program for the women’s tournament,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told The Associated Press in an interview at the Paris Olympics.

A final vote of the Division I membership would be taken in January for the plan that would allow financial incentives to begin with the 2025 tournament.

The Indianapolis-based NCAA sharing March Madness revenue with its membership has long been a feature of the men’s tournament. The 2018 tournament, for example, brought in $844.3 million in television and marketing rights, the vast majority from a contract with CBS and Turner Sports to televise the games. The latest extension of that deal is worth $8.8 billion over eight years, starting this year.

Most of the money flows through the NCAA and back to its member schools, more than 300 of which field Division I basketball teams eligible to play in the tournament. The schools mostly re-invest in athletics, from scholarships for athletes in all sports—though not salaries—to coaching salaries, training facilities, stadiums, ballparks and arenas.

The lack of a units system for the women’s tournament has been a point of sharp criticism.

What helped push it through now is the NCAA’s new media rights deal with ESPN that includes many women’s championships. Women’s basketball is valued at $65 million per tournament—roughly 10 times more than in the contract that ends this year.

“That made it possible for us to do the most important piece of this,” Baker said. “Being able to define what a units program would look like based on the revenue generated by the tournament.”

The women’s March Madness proposal is expected to mirror the men’s program in many ways. Right now, every men’s team that reaches the NCAA Tournament currently receives the same amount of revenue (called a “ unit ″) for making the tournament.

The longer a school’s tournament run lasts the more units the school’s conference receives. Conferences decide the distribution of unit revenue to each of its members. Each unit was worth about $2 million for the 2023 men’s tourney.

Distribution of the units is paid out over a six-year period on the men’s side, meaning this year conferences are earning money on units from 2018-2023.

College leaders may opt to have the women’s tourney units paid out over a shorter period of time, making the value of each one worth more. They also could decide to start payments in the same year that units are earned, rather than waiting a year as on the men’s side.

The women’s tournament is coming off its most successful year ever that included a record audience of 18.7 million for the title game win by the University of South Carolina over the University of Iowa, the highest for a basketball broadcast of any kind in five years. It outdrew the men’s championship game—UConn winning its second consecutive title with a win over Purdue—by nearly 3 million viewers. The women’s tournament also had record attendance.

“I think we have shown these last few years how exciting our game is and what happens when the investment is made,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “This is just another example of the growth of our game and how there is no better time to be part of women’s basketball.”