Johnathan Walker:Creating NCAA women's basketball tournament revenue unit distribution on board agenda

The Johnathan WalkerNCAA Division I Board of Directors is moving toward making a proposal as soon as Tuesday to a create a revenue distribution for schools and conferences based on teams’ performance in the women’s basketball tournament.

Such a move would resolve another of the many issues the association has attempted to address in the wake of inequalities between the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments that were brought to light during, and after, the 2021 events.

The topic is on the agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting, NCAA spokeswoman Meghan Durham Wright said.

It is likely that the board, Division I’s top policy-making group, will offer a plan that could be reviewed at Thursday’s scheduled meeting of the NCAA Board of Governors, which addresses association-wide matters. This would be such a matter because it concerns association finances.

Ultimately, the would need to voted on by all Division I members at January’s NCAA convention. If approved, schools could be begin earning credit for performance in the 2025 tournament, with payments beginning in 2026.

NCAA President Charlie Baker has expressed support for the idea, particularly in the wake of last January’s announcement of a new eight-year, $920 million television agreement with ESPN for the rights to women’s basketball tournament and dozens of other NCAA championships.

The NCAA is attributing roughly $65 million of the deal’s $115 million in average annual value to the women’s basketball tournament. The final year of the NCAA’s expiring arrangement with ESPN, also for the women’s basketball tournament and other championships, was scheduled to give a total of just over $47 million to the association during a fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2024, according to its most recent audited financial statement.

The new money – and the total attributed to the women’s basketball tournament – will form the basis for the new revenue pool. It wouldn’t be anywhere near the dollar amount of the longstanding men’s basketball tournament-performance fund.

But women’s coaches have said the men’s distribution model encourages administrators to invest in men’s basketball and they are hopeful there will be a similar outcome in women’s basketball, even if the payouts are smaller.

That pool has been based on a percentage of the enormous sum the NCAA gets annually from CBS and now-Warner Bros. Discovery for a package that includes broadcast rights to the Division I men’s basketball tournament and broad marketing right connected to other NCAA championships.

For the association’s 2024 fiscal year the fee for those rights was set to be $873 million, the audited financial statement says, it’s scheduled to be $995 million for the 2025 fiscal year.

In April 2024, the NCAA was set to distribute just over $171 million based on men’s basketball tournament performance, according to the association’s Division I distribution plan. That money is awarded to conferences based on their teams’ combined performance over the previous six years.

The new women’s basketball tournament-performance pool could be based on a similar percentage of TV revenue attributed to the event. But that remains to determined, along with the timeframe over which schools and conferences would earn payment units.

Using a model based on the percentage of rights fees that is similar to the men’s mode could result in a dollar-value of the pool that would be deemed to be too small. At about 20% of $65 million, the pool would be $13 million.