NCAA Pursues Fairer Future: Women’s Tournament Unit Distribution Proposal in the Works

How does women’s college basketball capitalize on this moment?

As the sport proceeded to shatter attendance and viewership records, it was the question that was asked and answered the most during the Final Four last weekend in Cleveland. The audience for the South Carolina-Iowa national championship game, which drew 18.9 million viewers, increased 89 percent from the 2023 title game and an incredible 285 percent from 2022. This indicates the rapid and dramatic rise of women’s basketball.

The women’s tournament was, by all measures, a triumph. But the teams whose success drove it did not receive money for their part of it. And so, as the sport turns its page to next season, focus has centered on the simplest and most straightforward piece of progress: units.

A portion of NCAA Tournament revenue known as a “unit” is awarded to each men’s team that competes in March Madness for qualifying for the tournament and for each win that follows. The first four wins also matter. The payout for each NCAA Tournament unit is spread out over six years and has a value of little more than $2 million.

Nothing is awarded to women’s teams for qualifying for or progressing through the NCAA Tournament. The men’s roughly billion-dollar broadcast rights agreement with CBS/Turner and the women’s tournament’s overlooked and underappreciated past are the main causes of the discrepancy.

But NCAA president Charlie Baker said the goal is to figure out a solution by next year, and The Athletic has obtained one possible proposal circulating on how to do it.

The 22 Division I commissioners who control the FCS and basketball-focused conferences, collectively known as CCA 22, have been circulating a unit plan in recent weeks, a copy of which The Athletic has obtained. The CCA22 proposal suggests that leagues should be rewarded for both participation and performance. The proposal is organized around broad concepts and outlines areas of both concern and emphasis. Most people view it as a starting point for additional conversation.

“Give us the units,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said amid the Trojans’ Elite Eight run. “Why shouldn’t we have the units, right? The direct investment. People like money. They like return on investment. People are starting to see that women’s basketball is not just a values proposition, although it’s great theater and it’s great entertainment, but there’s also a monetary aspect to it.

“I just don’t see any reason why, if there’s men’s basketball that gets units for the tournament, why we shouldn’t.”

A valuation for the women’s basketball tournament was expressly requested by the NCAA from its media advisors as part of the terms of its recently announced media rights agreement with ESPN. The women’s basketball tournament is valued at about $65 million annually under the terms of the contract, which will start in the fall of next year. That figure serves as a crucial foundation for the development of the unit program. However, it is still unclear exactly how it would be set up in terms of who would be eligible to receive units, when they would be distributed, and whether or not they would be worth the same money as the units in the men’s tournament.

Each Division I conference would get a unit under the CCA22 proposal for entering the tournament through its automatic qualifier, much like in the men’s division. Each league would be free to decide how to split the revenue. (For instance, a low-major conference might try to encourage investment in women’s basketball by giving the school that won the bid the whole 50% of the unit. Alternatively, it might distribute the money equally to each member.) Like the men’s program, the CCA22 proposal would also award points to each team that wins a game in order to progress farther in the tournament.

“If the unit distribution is based only on those who receive at-large berths and wins in the tournament, the large majority will be distributed to a small number of conferences,” the proposal reads.

It recommends a beginning annual budget of $25 million, the same amount that the finance subcommittee of the DI Board first proposed. This would enable the new media rights agreement to completely support the unit program. Unlike the men’s system, which distributes a unit is value over a six-year period, the CCA22 proposal calls for units to be issued annually and reset annually. According to the idea, the unit earnings will be distributed along with the tournament winners in the same year.

 

“Distributing units annually and resetting ensures the overall unit value remains high — $190K/unit,” the proposal reads. “(Current men’s tournament) unit values are each approximately $340K/year. Although distributing less units annually, the WBB unit value can have greater impact with the full amount ($190K/unit) being distributed each year.”

Of course, there are objections to certain aspects of this approach. They will probably come from the commissioners of the FBS, who did not participate in the proposal’s creation. Unit revenue may make more sense to distribute in the year or years after the tournament in which it is earned, according to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, during SiriusXM’s Final Four pregame show. He added, “This will probably frustrate the women’s basketball community but is something that works pretty well.” Sankey made this statement based on his office’s financial analysis.

While Sankey was in favor of performance-based units as well, he appeared to be ambivalent about the notion of providing a unit to each Division I conference annually. The league would profit from deep runs, as the SEC is used to seeing from teams like South Carolina. However, that is because the Gamecocks deserve it because they triumphed there.

“It’s just a credit to her leadership.” @GregSankey celebrates the greatness of @dawnstaley as the @SEC wins its third straight women’s basketball championship.

Hear more coverage of @GamecockWBB’s with @NicoleAuerbach: https://t.co/AqoEKtwt3b pic.twitter.com/OGWl0LKuco

— College Sports on SiriusXM (@SXMCollege) April 8, 2024

“The issue that was discussed early on is when you create these revenue opportunities that it affects decision-making,” Sankey said. “I’m not sure that, ‘Wow, if we do these units, then everybody across the country will better support women’s basketball.’ I’ve talked about our support and commitment being real across our league. That’s why you have four different programs (in the women’s Final Four) from four different conferences, because that’s widespread (support) that needs to continue. It’s not just about taking in the checks. It’s about supporting women’s basketball with that revenue opportunity.”

Participants in these talks anticipate that the concept of a participation unit will spark some discussion in the upcoming months. Larger conferences often favor the idea of keeping what you earn from winning games, but smaller conferences embrace it since it is additional cash they do not have that can flow back into women’s basketball programs even if they cannot pull off upsets in the tournament.

The timing and structure of the dividend will also be hotly contested. According to one source, in order to guarantee that the women’s tournament unit has the same monetary worth as the men’s unit, the NCAA may transfer funds from the men’s tournament or from another source of revenue. However, the majority of the administrators who were contacted by The Athletic believed that it was more plausible that the unit value was still linked to its share of the ESPN agreement. The $25 million yearly total unit pool represents 38.5 percent of the average annual value of the women’s basketball tournament (with the remaining funds going toward event operating expenses).

The DI Board’s finance subcommittee has received a copy of the CCA22 proposal, two sources said. That committee has been tasked with developing and discussing format proposals, and it is expected to meet jointly with the Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee and Division I Women’s Basketball Committee this month to seek initial feedback, an NCAA spokesman said.

August is when the Division I Board of Directors is supposed to formalize its suggestion for a unit program; however, as any modification affects revenue distribution, it needs to be approved by the entire Division I membership. At the 2025 NCAA convention, a vote on creating a women’s basketball unit program is anticipated to take place in January. The unit program might be put into action as early as the women’s basketball competition in 2025.

“I do believe the unit will happen,” Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said on the SiriusXM pregame show. “The amount, I think, is TBD. I’m not sure it’s going to start off as the same as the men. The men’s unit is attributed to a much higher revenue stream because the TV contract on the men’s side is so handsome. But it’s getting started, and I think there’ll be a commitment to grow it over time, hopefully quickly.

“In my mind, it’s just a start. It’s a good validation of the sport and where it’s come from.”

(Photo of Charlie Baker: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)