NCAA to begin paying for women’s basketball success

EXPERT Q&A

The NCAA has announced that Division I conferences will receive payment the longer their teams stay in the NCAA women's basketball March Madness tournament.

This money will then flow into colleges and universities in the conferences, according to Richard Paulsen, assistant professor of sport management at the U-M School of Kinesiology.

Beginning this year, $15 million will be disbursed to the conferences based on their teams' successes in the tournament. Over the 2026-27 fiscal year, the funds will increase to $20 million and will reach $25 million starting with 2027-28, according to an NCAA news release. After reaching the fully funded amount of $25 million, the funds will grow at the same rate as all other Division I funds.

Are there any misconceptions or inaccuracies about how this money will be distributed to colleges and universities?

The way that many headlines are worded has led many to believe that the NCAA will be paying women's teams directly for their success in tournament play. That is not how it works for football or men's basketball, and it is not how it will work for women's basketball. Each game played in the tournament will lead to payments from the NCAA to the conference over the following three years. Those payments are then distributed evenly among all conference members, with the money flowing to the athletic departments. The athletic departments then decide how to spend that money.

When did the men's leagues begin being paid, and how do the women's disbursements compare?

While this is a step in the right direction, these payments pale in comparison to disbursements for the men's tournament, which total about $264 million. Despite the women's championship game having higher viewership last year than the men's championship game, the women's tournament was sold in a TV deal with a host of other championships, valuing the women's tournament at $65 million annually. The men's tournament has its own TV deal worth more than a billion dollars annually. This undervaluing of the women's tournament in the sale of TV rights by the NCAA limits potential disbursements to conferences.

Do the disbursements come from a percentage of the TV deal, and can those deals be negotiated to increase payouts to college and university conferences?

TV deals for airing regular season games are negotiated by the conferences, but the NCAA sells the rights to airing championships. Since the NCAA is a member-led organization, most of the money that it takes in from selling the TV rights to the championships flows back to the conferences and member schools. In setting this initial $15 million figure, the NCAA has made reference to that corresponding share-26%-of the TV rights deal for women's basketball, highlighting that that was the share disbursed to men's programs when they first received disbursements based on tournament success. While the $264 million figure for the men's tournament is a smaller share of their TV deal-24%-the women's TV deal significantly undervalues the women's basketball tournament relative to the men's tournament. The deal that includes the women's tournament was signed about a year ago and runs through 2032.

How will schools use the money disbursed to them? Will individual players receive payment?

Historically, disbursements made to schools have been used to cover costs. These costs include scholarships for athletes, salaries for athletic department employees and coaches, facilities costs, and more. Under the new House settlement, starting in the 2025-26 school year, the schools will be able to directly compensate athletes as payment for revenues the schools earn in using athlete NIL in selling tickets, TV rights and merchandise. So moving forward, these disbursements will also likely be used to cover costs associated with directly paying athletes.