NCAA Undervalued Women’s Basketball Tournament by Millions While Prioritizing Men’s Tourney, Report Finds

The report concludes that maximizing revenues from women’s basketball and other sports will “promote gender equity while at the same time increasing and diversifying the NCAA’s revenue streams.”

The NCAA hired the Kaplan firm in March, following the firestorm from a video posted to social media by Oregon women’s player Sedona Prince showing a single skimpy weight rack at the women’s tournament compared with a sprawling setup of equipment at the men’s event. The Kaplan report details the vast difference between the 2021 men’s and women’s tournaments in areas including funding, food, Covid-19 testing, equipment, outdoor space and more.

The report’s larger findings paint a much broader picture of what it describes as the NCAA’s long-term neglect of the women’s tournament. It criticizes the association for its lack of investment in and promotion of the event, and takes aim at the NCAA’s non-competitive sale and packaging of the tournament broadcast rights.

The NCAA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In response to media inquiries during the basketball tournaments in March, the NCAA said the women’s tournament lost $2.8 million in 2019, “the largest loss of any NCAA championship.” 

Yet detailed estimates included in an addendum to the Kaplan report, prepared by a sports media rights consultant who worked for more than two decades as an NBA executive, paint a sharply different picture. 

The women’s basketball tournament could be worth $100 million a year in media-rights fees alone starting in 2025 after its current deal ends. That’s according to an analysis led by Ed Desser, president of a California-based sports media rights consultancy.

Instead, the NCAA bundled the women’s tournament with 28 other sports championships and sold the entire package to ESPN for about $34 million a year, according to the report. 

The report calls for a dramatic overhaul of nearly every aspect of how the NCAA stages the two tournaments, starting with holding both the men’s and women’s Final Fours on one weekend in one city, ideally starting in 2023 to maximize impact on future TV negotiations. That is “the best possible way to ensure that male and female players have similar, if not the same, experiences at the championships with respect to sponsorship, gifts, signage, etc.” it says.

It also says the NCAA should use the “March Madness” branding for both the Division I men’s and women’s basketball championships, starting immediately. The NCAA has for years withheld use of the powerful brand from the women even though its trademark allows it to be used for both tournaments, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

NCAA staff involved in planning previous women’s tournaments recounted repeatedly asking to use the branding but being rebuffed, with some being told it was “off limits” because of the NCAA’s relationship with

CBS

/Turner. 

But according to the report, “no one at the NCAA was able to identify any instance in which CBS/Turner itself suggested that the women’s tournament could not use March Madness—or even an instance in which the NCAA asked the broadcaster for its position on the issue.”

Media rights to the women’s basketball tournament should be sold separately instead of bundling them with other events, the report says, adding that the NCAA should negotiate for a new tier of its corporate sponsorship program that is tied specifically to the women’s basketball championship.

Doing any or all of that would be highly disruptive to the universe of broadcast and sponsorship agreements that, according to the report, focus on the valuable men’s basketball tournament at the expense of everything else. 

The NCAA generates 72% of its total of about $1 billion in annual revenue from the men’s basketball tournament, including ticket sales, the Kaplan report says. CBS/Turner paid the NCAA $850 million for media and broadcast rights for the men’s tournament this year, and the contract increases at a fixed amount each year until it reaches $1.12 billion in its final year, 2032.

As part of that deal, CBS/Turner also controls the rights to the NCAA’s corporate sponsorship program for all sports championships the NCAA runs, not just men’s basketball. Those sponsorship rights are worth an estimated $211 million this year—and CBS/Turner pocket that revenue, an arrangement that was reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this year.  (Top-division college football operates its own championship and sells its own sponsorships.) 

The setup discourages NCAA corporate sponsors from advertising on broadcasts other than men’s basketball, thus decreasing the value of those broadcasts, the report says. 

It says that “to air advertisements during the women’s basketball championship while reaping the benefits of the NCAA’s brand, for example, a corporate sponsor must first buy into the expensive CBS/Turner Corporate Partner Program, and then turn to ESPN and separately negotiate and pay for airtime during the women’s basketball championship.” 

Representatives from CBS and Turner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The report notes that although the women’s tournament audience is much smaller than the men’s, the events are trending in opposite directions: Total viewing of the women’s tournament has increased by 32% since 2015 despite being carried on cable television (ESPN), while total viewing of the men’s event has declined 40% despite being on more widely available network TV.

The report also recommends the NCAA break out some other parts of its sports-championship package in future rights negotiations. That would “likely attract multiple media entities, in addition to ESPN, to bid to telecast the events.” Desser and his colleagues believe the smaller packages, such as the men’s and women’s College World Series, “will collectively generate far more total value for each Championship than the present approach.”

The NCAA has never put its non-men’s basketball championships up for competitive bid, and has thus, “foregone the single most crucial negotiating tactic in assuring it is receiving fair market value for its media property,” the report says. 

The report also breaks down the sizable difference in how much the NCAA spends to stage the tournaments. 

In 2019, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, the men’s basketball tournament cost $53.2 million to put on, and the women’s basketball tournament $17.9 million. Although NCAA staff members understand that men’s basketball is the organization’s chief moneymaker, “the view that men’s basketball is highly profitable and therefore worthy of increased investment has cultivated a culture within the NCAA in which men’s basketball is not required to abide by many of the same budgetary constraints as women’s basketball (or other sports),” the report says.

The report also found that the NCAA’s tournament-related revenue distribution practices incentivized schools to prioritize their men’s basketball teams. Schools receive annual payouts weighted based on how many games their men’s teams play in the basketball tournament. 

The NCAA offers no similar game bonuses for women’s teams, which sends “a very clear and loud message to student-athletes, conferences, and schools about which sports matter and which sports do not,” the report reads. It calls for the NCAA to gradually include women’s tournament results in its fund-distribution criteria. 

The NCAA did not approve the Kaplan report or change any of its recommendations before it was issued, the report says.

The Kaplan firm says it interviewed 144 NCAA staff members, reviewed 4,086 NCAA documents and sought submissions on the topic through a website, receiving 1,762 of them from athletes, parents, coaches, fans and others. The basketball report will be followed by a second phase that will address the other NCAA-sponsored sports, the firm says.

—Jared Diamond contributed to this article.

Write to Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com and Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com