March Madness Will Finally Pay Women’s Teams $15 Million In 2025 – Are They Getting Enough?

The past five years have heralded an unprecedented jump in the popularity of women’s college basketball – and with it, awareness of its mistreatment compared to the men’s game.

From training facilities to transport to tournaments, the often-overlooked women’s teams received lower quality and starkly less funding. Even as improvements have been made, though, one financial hurdle remained: women’s teams made no money from tournament games.

To reframe, the 2024 women’s NCAA basketball championship game, boasting Caitlin Clark‘s Iowa Hawkeyes and Dawn Staley‘s undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks, drew 18.7 million viewers (an 89% increase from 2023). The men’s championship, featuring a second consecutive UConn Huskies victory over the Purdue Boilermakers, drew about three million fewer viewers. And the women’s teams received a grand total of zero dollars for their participation.

Now, finally, that revenue will be evened.

NCAA membership followed the example of the Division I Board of Governors Wednesday, voting unanimously to approve a pay structure for women’s teams in March Madness. Starting this year, women’s teams will be awarded ‘performance units’ of revenue, totaling $15 million in 2025 and increasing to $25 million by 2028.

“The long awaited, hard fought for and well-earned day is here,” said North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart. “I am so grateful for the effort of so many to bring this reality to our sport. Women’s basketball is more popular than ever before, seats are filled, arenas are sold out and games are on national TV almost every night.”

Staley agreed, adding, “This continues our fight to lift women’s basketball to historic levels.”

Women’s basketball is currently valued at around $65 million per tournament, according to the NCAA’s new media rights deal – a jump of nearly ten times the previous deal.

While the women’s game still has a lot of ground to make up, its growth and increasing sophistication is undeniable. As college stars JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers continue to draw viewers to women’s basketball on that level, the WNBA has seen a massive jump in attention as well, highlighting stars Clark, A’ja Wilson, and Sabrina Ionescu, among others. This revenue-sharing agreement is just another step in the right direction, but it’s one that the players and league have thoroughly earned.

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Article by Katherine Manz