Of course Women’s March Madness rights are undervalued

The expectations going into this year’s women’s March Madness were that 2024 would be hard to top without Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. 

And while no games (so far) have come close to breaking the single-game viewership records set by Clark’s Iowa team last year, the breadth of interest in women’s college basketball has been on full display. 

According to ESPN, this year’s Sweet 16 was the second most-watched on record, with 1.7m average viewers, and four of the top-10 most watched women’s Sweet 16 games of all-time. 

This continued a trend from the first two rounds of the tournament, which were also the second-most watched in history, with seven games surpassing 1 million viewers – more than all the early rounds of the 2009-2023 tournaments combined. All four Elite Eight games were also in the Top 10 all-time.

This growing ascendancy of an entire sport, even after it lost two of its biggest stars, should be cause for universal celebration. And I’d be happy to join the chorus loudly celebrating the success, if it weren’t the elephant in the room that is the NCAA’s TV rights deals. 

How do you sign a deal that’s immediately out of date? Ask the NCAA

Back in January 2024, the NCAA signed an eight-year, $920 million deal with ESPN covering 40 women’s championships, including women’s basketball. 

The deal, which started this year, valued the women’s March Madness tournament at $65 million annually — nearly doubling the value of the previous package. 

The NCAA touted this as a major achievement, especially in the wake of the weight room debacle, which had brought national attention to the comical levels of disparity between how the NCAA treated its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. (The women’s tournament couldn’t even use the NCAA’s “March Madness” branding until 2022). 

And yet for many of us, it was obvious even last January that the NCAA had undersold these rights.

This opinion wasn't coming from nowhere. 

A 2021 independent report following the weight room scandal had estimated that the women’s tournament could be worth anywhere between $81 and $112 million on its own, even without packaging it with 39 other sports. And this was before the 2023 Final between LSU and Iowa, which drew a then-record 9.9 million viewers (a record that was smashed multiple times last year).

To top it off, the NCAA hadn’t taken these rights out to market – they only re-negotiated with ESPN. 

As I wrote on the eve of last year’s tournament: “Here’s my biggest bet of March Madness: The NCAA is going to immediately regret their new media rights deal.”

You know what happened next.

Last year’s Final drew 18.9 million viewers, outdrawing the men’s by 4 million. (Even Iowa’s Elite Eight rematch with LSU drew 12.3 million viewers, which was more than the World Series averaged that year.) 

The NCAA’s new media rights deal hadn’t yet kicked in, and it was already out of date.

Detractors might say last year was a fluke, given the unique star power of Caitlin Clark. 

And yet, ESPN’s regular season WBB viewership was up 3% this year, with a record 15 games drawing 500,000 viewers or more. Even if we don’t break the single-game records from last year, it’s clear there’s a new status quo when it comes to public interest in women’s March Madness. Caitlin Clark is no longer in college, but we’re not going back to the pre-Caitlin days. 

Is it possible to sell a tournament you don’t believe in?

A recent Front Office Sports piece dove straight into the question as to whether the NCAA got a fair deal for its rights. 

Media expert John Kosner, who helped author the 2021 independent report, is quoted as saying that he was “mocked endlessly” for having the "audacity to think that the women’s tournament was… a bona fide event.” 

“We have close friends of ours who we respect in the industry, and they’re from a different generation, but they just dismissed the notion as implausible,” he said. “And that’s how a lot of decisions get made in the industry. And if the owner of the property isn’t willing to fight their way through that, they get what they deserve. And it’s really unfortunate.”

They’re from a different generation. They just dismissed the notion as implausible. 

This is professional speak for saying that the old guys at the NCAA didn’t really believe the women’s tournament had potential. And so they packaged it up with 39 other sports and, rather than spend the effort to take it to market, just asked ESPN if they’d like to re-up.

They probably thought they were pulling a fast one on Disney.

It’s more than just dollars (though the dollars are important)

What we’re left with today is a women’s rights deal that is 17x smaller than the men’s, despite crushing the men’s Final Four in viewership last year and gradually gaining on them everywhere else. 

And it may be why, on the opening day of the women’s tournament, this was the top of ESPN’s home page:

Notice anything interesting?

ESPN has exclusive broadcast rights to the women’s tournament. It doesn’t have any broadcast rights for the men’s tournament.

And yet, on the first day of the women’s tournament, when Oregon and Vanderbilt were battling in overtime, and Audi Crooks was trying to will Iowa State past Michigan, and Kentucky's Georgia Amoore was putting up 34 points in a back-and-forth thriller — the top of ESPN’s home page was dedicated to scores from the men’s tournament.

When people ask me what I mean when I say that women’s sports leagues can’t rely on their broadcast partners to provide the promotion and coverage they need to succeed — look at that screenshot again.

ESPN would rather cover men’s sports events they don’t have the rights for than women’s sports events they PAID to broadcast.

Would the women’s tournament have gotten top-page billing if ESPN had paid more for the rights? I’d be willing to bet it would be getting more coverage and promotion across all of ESPN’s properties. 

Zooming out — and looking ahead

This is the true cost of the NCAA’s lack of faith in its own women’s basketball tournament. It’s not just missing the upfront revenue of a larger media rights deal. It’s losing out on all the coverage and promotion its media partner would theoretically invest in because they signed a larger media rights deal. 

As it is, ESPN was able to sell 80% of its ad inventory just during the upfront, with the championship game selling out more than three months in advance.

It turns out brands understand the value of this tournament more than the NCAA does, and that lets ESPN profit without needing to invest or even promote its own tournament on par with the men’s. 

Now — it’s easy to say ESPN should have paid more for these rights. But what if this was, in fact, the most that ESPN was willing to pay? What if both sides of the deal undervalued these rights?

These are the more difficult question stakeholders need to face.

After all, the women’s Final Four tips off tomorrow, and this is the top story on ESPN’s home page:

Why highlight the women’s games you have the rights to on Friday, when you could highlight men’s games you don’t have the rights to on Saturday?

Maybe ESPN would promote the women’s tournament more if it paid more for the rights. Or maybe a company that’s willing to promote its competitor’s event vs. the one it paid $65 million dollars for won’t ever give women’s basketball the shot it deserves.

I expect this year’s Final Four to be electric, as always. And I expect this media rights deal to remain a disappointment for the next seven years.

— Haley Rosen

ICYMI: I wrote an op-ed for Sportico outlining my high-level view of the industry today and why women’s sports need their own media ecosystem.