NCAA President Charlie Baker would be 'shocked' if women's tournament revenue units isn't passed

NCAA President Charlie Baker and a member of the Division I Board of Directors said Wednesday they foresee no issues with getting final approval for the proposed creation of a revenue distribution for schools and conferences based on teams’ performance in the women’s basketball tournament.

The board voted Tuesday to advance the proposal, which now must go before the NCAA Board of Governors and the full Division I membership. The Board of Governors is scheduled to meet Thursday, and the membership vote would occur at January’s NCAA convention.

“I’ll be shocked if this thing has any issues at all” gaining approval, Baker said during a video-conference.

“I think that everyone sees this as a great opportunity to capitalize on” a new, eight-year, $920 million TV deal with ESPN that includes rights to the women’s basketball tournament “and prioritize (the proposed new distribution) as much as possible,” said Central Arkansas President Houston Davis, who chairs the Board of Directors committee that developed the proposal and is a member of the Board of Governors.

Baker said the concept “was pretty high up on my list” of priorities when he became the NCAA’s president in March 2023 and “reflects the growth of the game and especially makes it possible now for schools that participate in the tournament, and do well, to benefit from that financially and be able to reinvest in their programs.

“I think this is all critically important to us and to the sport generally and to women's sports, since this is in some respects a premier women's collegiate athletic event every year. And I think it's only going to get more so going forward, which is going to be great.”

Baker and Davis provided other details about the proposal, under which schools would begin earning credit for performance in the 2025 tournament and payments would begin in 2026. According to a statement Tuesday from the NCAA, the pool of money to be distributed would be $15 million in 2026, $20 million in 2027 and $25 million in 2028. After that, the pool would increase at about 2.9% annually, which the NCAA said is "the same rate as all other Division I" shared-revenue pools.

The money would be allocated in the same way that a similar performance-based pool from the men’s basketball tournament has been distributed for years: There would be 132 units allocated each year. Each participating conference would get one unit, plus an additional unit for each win by one of its teams through to the Final Four.

The unit values would vary annually, with conferences then taking their total payout from the NCAA and sharing it among their schools.

As for $25 million becoming the target in third year and the basis for later increases, Davis said: “We were very proud of the fact that, at 25 (million), that was going to carve out a greater percentage of available resources than we do for men’s basketball and those distributions. I think that the 25 (million) became the number of what was a possible and reasonable stretch goal for us ... to make a meaningful impact.”

According to figures from NCAA audited financial statements and Division I revenue distribution plans, the annual amount of the men’s basketball tournament performance pool is equal to a little over 20% of the money from the NCAA gets each year 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 rights connected to other NCAA championships. In 2024, that total was $873 million and the performance pool was set to be $171 million.

In 2025, CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery are scheduled to pay $995 million.

The NCAA attributes $65 million of the new ESPN deal’s average annual value of $115 million to the women’s basketball tournament.

The wide-ranging contract with CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery is scheduled to run through 2032, and Baker said that the NCAA’s desire to “create a separate value for the women’s basketball tournament” was a reason the association negotiated to have the new deal with ESPN also end in 2032.