NCAA President Charlie Baker: Women’s basketball media rights a ‘giant opportunity’

DALLAS – Industry stakeholders believe women’s college basketball isn’t merely having a moment. They contend that the interest surrounding the sport this year represents the new normal, if not a mere starting point for even further growth.

How best to maximize the commercial potential that exists for the sport has been a central question the past several weeks and continued to be a discussion point Monday, as leaders throughout college athletics gathered for the first day of LEAD1 Association‘s annual spring meeting. LEAD1 advocates on policy issues on behalf of all FBS schools.

“I have not seen women’s basketball at quite this zenith before now,” Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, who helped launch the WNBA as the league’s first president, said during a panel with various commissioners and moderated by former Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby. “I do think there is a moment here.”

There couldn’t be a more opportune time for women’s basketball to enjoy a surge in popularity, which was reflected in virtually every metric during the NCAA tournament. The championship game between LSU and Iowa attracted 9.9 million viewers, making it the most-viewed women’s basketball game on record. 

The media rights deal for the women’s NCAA tournament expires following the 2023-24 season. As part of the deal, signed in 2011, the rights for the tournament are packaged with the rights for 28 other NCAA championships – all but FBS football and men’s basketball. 

ESPN pays the NCAA all of $34 million annually for the package, which is widely considered egregiously undervalued. Two years ago, Kaplan Hecker & Fink, an independent law firm hired by the NCAA to investigate gender equity issues, estimated that women’s tournament rights alone are worth between $81 million and $112 million annually.

But the NCAA faces a high-stakes dilemma. Is it best for the NCAA to take the tournament to market separately as a standalone property, potentially risking diminishing the value of and exposure for some of the other events within that championship bundle?

Or should it go to market again as part of the larger bundle?

Veteran TV sources say the answer is not clear-cut. But new NCAA President Charlie Baker acknowledged Monday the significance of the looming decision regarding how to best handle that bundled package of championships.

“It is a giant opportunity,” Baker told LEAD1 CEO Tom McMillen during their Q&A panel. “And we better not blow it.”

The NCAA has a track record of leaving large sums of money on the table in media rights decisions, and that is not just a reference to the 2011 women’s tournament rights deal. In 2016, the NCAA decided to extend its rights deal for the men’s tournament with ESPN and Turner Sports through 2032 rather than wait and take the coveted property to the open market in 2024. Chicago-based Endeavor, which specializes in pro and college sports rights valuations, told On3 that between 2016 and 2032 the NCAA left $9.27 billion on the table.

Far less money is in play with the upcoming women’s rights deal. But the NCAA’s decision is consequential. The NCAA is working with Endeavor to value the rights and look at different packaging options before the NCAA finalizes a strategy to take to market, first with ESPN and potentially with other entities.

Ackerman said conference commissioners received a briefing update from Endeavor last week. She believes multiple networks will have interest in the women’s tournament, which is an important variable to drive up the value. In terms of the Kaplan report estimate that the property is worth between $81 million and $112 million, Ackerman said, those are good numbers “to me. If it’s even half of that, that’s still a nice number. That’s real money.”

Ackerman said she does not have the answer for whether it’s best to unbundle the women’s tournament rights or not. But she said, “women’s basketball at this point has proven itself in a way that should allow us to maximize the commercial outcomes here in ways that hadn’t been done before.”

Women’s teams deserve ‘some cut’ in revenue-distribution model

The other top-of-mind issue related to women’s basketball is when conferences will finally reap the financial benefits for their women’s teams advancing in the NCAA tournament. The NCAA awarded more than $170 million this year for teams’ success in the men’s tournament while awarding zero dollars for success in the women’s tournament. 

In its January report, the NCAA Transformation Committee recommended the Division I revenue-distribution model be evaluated to “consider models that reflect contemporary Division I values and account for athletic performance in more sports than men’s basketball.” The Division I Board of Directors formally adopted the committee’s recommendations. 

“It would be very hard not to have something now …,” Ackerman said. “It would be very hard not to have some cut.”

Ackerman said the three questions she has are: Where is the money going to come from? How much does it have to be to start? And, perhaps most pressing, what process is underway to get the wheels in motion on adopting change?

“I’m not sure I understand how that analysis is being conducted right now,” Ackerman said. “What committee, among the many committees, is working on the modeling that would produce the analysis that we could all sort of think about and decide what’s the right path forward on that?”