The NCAA reached a new eight-year media rights agreement with ESPN for various NCAA championships, featuring the Women’s NCAA Tournament.
ESPN put out a release with details on the detail. That release included this very important note:
“With the significant increase in value of the new agreement, NCAA members will explore revenue distribution units for the women’s basketball tournament. The Division I Board of Directors Finance committee began discussion of revenue distribution philosophies and new models this year, and those discussions will continue with membership in the coming year.”
The men’s version of the NCAA Tournament has had a win unit structure for a long time. For each NCAA Tournament win, a school generates money for itself and its conference.
The women have not had a win-unit structure because the media rights value of the Women’s NCAA Tournament has never been considerable.
That has changed with this media rights deal. As Rachel Bachman of The Wall Street Journal has noted (in a tweet shown below), the value of the Women’s NCAA Tournament has jumped nearly $60 million per year as a result of this ESPN deal. There is finally a money pool large enough to divide among schools.
USC is poised to be a big beneficiary of this deal, once a win-unit structure is finalized. This is viewed as a “when, not if” situation. It will happen. It’s just a matter of getting this lined up before the 2024-2025 season.
This year — 2024 — marks the end of the current ESPN deal with the NCAA for the women’s basketball tournament and other sports championships, so the win-unit structure won’t be in place. It should be in place for next season. USC, with a top-15 team now, is bringing in the No. 1 recruiting class in the country for next season to add to superstar JuJu Watkins. The Trojans are putting themselves in position to win a lot of NCAA Tournament games and make a lot of dollars over the next eight years of this new ESPN-NCAA deal.
The NCAA said the women's basketball tournament was worth $6M-$7M a year in its previous TV deal.
The tournament is now worth $65 million, or 57% of the total value of the NCAA's $115 million, 40-sport-championship deal with ESPN.https://t.co/CXHTNzzo0w
— Rachel Bachman (@Bachscore) January 4, 2024
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