Women’s college basketball teams will be competing this weekend for more than a trip to the Final Four. For the first time, after years of pressure from coaches and other stakeholders, there is money at stake, too.
The men’s NCAA basketball tournament has paid out “units” for each spot in the bracket for more than 30 years. Those payments are equivalent to a portion of annual television revenue, with the money going to conferences, which then eventually redistribute the cash to schools. A national championship run can result in millions of dollars for a conference. There had long been advocacy for a similar format in the women’s tournament—not to pay out the same numbers as the men but to allow for any pay out from their revenue at all. Coaches argued that paying schools for tournament performance would incentivize schools to invest more in their programs, which in turn would raise the level of competition, grow the sport and potentially increase revenue and interest all around.
After years of those conversations, NCAA membership voted unanimously in January to establish a payment structure for women’s basketball, starting with the tournament this March. Essentially, every game a team plays will represent a unit.
“It allows us to be validated and rewarded for postseason success, which on your own campus now puts pressure on your administration to value and invest in your women's game, right?” said UNC Tar Heels coach Courtney Banghart, who serves as president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. “It's basic economics.”
A collective $15 million will be paid out, representing 26% of the annual tournament media revenue for the NCAA, which is the same percentage that was first paid out for the men when they began earning units in 1991. (It makes each “unit” for the women this year worth a little more than $100,000. Funds earned this year will start to be distributed next year.) The pool will increase to $25 million by 2027.
Several coaches have said they want to see that number grow even more. But the fact that any number exists here is a meaningful step forward.
“The first step is good, that there’s actually something in place that allows for more revenue generation,” said Duke Blue Devils coach Kara Lawson, who faces off against UNC and Banghart in the Sweet 16 on Friday. “That’s a step in the right direction. But I think the revenue coming into this sport should be higher.”
A unit system was recommended as part of the independent gender equity review commissioned by the NCAA in 2021. That came after the organization was torched for its disparate handling of the men’s and women’s tournaments—highlighted by the gaps in training rooms and dining options that were available to athletes in the pandemic tournament bubbles. Some recommendations from the ensuing report were instituted right away. (Those included expanding the women’s tournament to 68 teams and permitting women to use the branding for “March Madness.”) Other changes have taken longer to materialize.
In her role as president of the WBCA, units were a constant subject of discussion over the last few years, Banghart said. “Every conversation in every room I’ve been in, I just say units, over and over,” she said. “It was my first and last word … It’s overdue.” The idea felt especially pertinent as the NCAA negotiated a new television deal with ESPN in 2023 and ’24.
The women’s basketball tournament is packaged with other college sports championships, such as baseball, softball, wrestling and gymnastics. In the $920-million, eight-year deal with ESPN that was announced in 2024, women’s basketball is valued annually at about $65 million. The gender equity review suggested that number might be even higher were the women’s tournament ever broken out and sold as a standalone media property. Even without pursuing that possibility, however, the $65 million in the new deal is still more than 10 times what the sport was valued at under the previous one.
Under that new contract, there was more pressure to create unit payouts. Coaches say the reasoning is simple: There is now increasing money in women’s basketball. And they want to be able to secure a portion of that in order to demonstrate and grow the value of their programs.
“I’m a team player,” said NC State Wolfpack coach Wes Moore. “I want to do everything I can to help NC State and to help NC State athletics. So it’s great to have an opportunity to really contribute to that.”
Of course, the men’s basketball television deal is larger by an order of magnitude, and their unit payouts are larger to match. Each unit for the men is worth about $2 million. The women’s game hopes that just the act of establishing units can help produce growth that might gradually close that gap.
“I think the numbers reflect where we are today,” South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley said. “I hope they don’t reflect where we are in five, 10 years.”
Staley & Co. bested Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the national championship game last year in front of the largest television audience ever for women’s basketball: 18.7 million viewers. It was the first time the women had ever outdrawn the men. That is not expected to happen again this year. But even with Clark now in the WNBA, women’s college basketball has continued to outdraw what it was doing two years ago, with ratings up dramatically from when the gender equity review was commissioned in 2021.
Coaches have long felt that many of the issues here were structural. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets coach Nell Fortner spent years as an ESPN broadcaster in between her stints on the sideline and recalled her frustration at reminders not to say “March Madness” or “Final Four”: That was not the NCAA’s branding for the women’s tournament. (“I’d be on the desk in the studio, and I’d say ‘Final Four, and ’Nell, you can’t say that,” Fortner said before the first round of the tournament. “I’m like, this makes no sense at all, what are we doing here?”) The example is small but telling. It could feel that easy pathways for growth were blocked off. But that has changed in recent years. And the establishment of units feels like one more turning point.
“The way we were held down is really, really maddening and unfortunate,” Fortner said. “But hey, now we’re on our way, let’s go. Can’t look backwards, got to look forward, and now let’s push it.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Money Is Finally on the Line at the Women’s NCAA Tournament.
