For years and years, prominent women’s college basketball coaches pleaded with the NCAA, their bosses, and, really, anyone who would listen. South Carolina coach Dawn Staley and many of her peers asked for units, believing that women’s teams deserved to be rewarded financially for advancing through the NCAA Tournament — just like the men’s teams were.
In January, those efforts were rewarded. For the first time in NCAA Tournament history and at a pivotal point in college athletics, women’s basketball teams will receive payouts proportionate to their success on court.
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“Units” is a shorthand way to describe the payouts associated with participating in and advancing through March Madness. For example, South Carolina’s run to the Final Four this year will earn the Southeastern Conference five units (and counting) — one for making the field and one for each of their four victories so far.
Each women’s basketball unit is worth approximately $113,600 this year, an amount that will then be paid out over the next three years. The payouts aren’t nearly as big as the ones the men get from their massive March Madness media rights deal. But they are a start — and that makes them significant.
“It’s the representation that the women’s game has value, and bringing value in any association or organization or company gives you a seat at the decision-making table,” said longtime Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade, one of the most respected voices in women’s college basketball. “In the past, the excuse for why the women didn’t have any unit distribution was a byproduct of how the finances within the NCAA were actually structured. … The women’s championship was bundled with 80 other championships and international rights, so the rationale was, well, we can’t really put a specific value on the women’s championship.”
But now the NCAA can do just that, in the wake of its new eight-year, $920-million deal with ESPN, which took effect last fall. The NCAA and ESPN kept the women’s basketball tournament as part of a bundle with other non-men’s basketball/football championships but specifically determined that the Division I women’s basketball tournament is worth $65 million annually.
“It eliminates the argument that there’s no revenue generated in the sport of women’s basketball, and that has been an Achilles heel for the women’s championship and women’s basketball,” McGlade said. “That argument can no longer be used.”
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Added Big East commissioner Val Ackerman: “There’s a symbolism that I don’t think can be lost on anybody — the fact that women’s basketball is being treated more seriously.”
After announcing the new media rights deal with ESPN last January, NCAA president Charlie Baker made the formation of a unit program a top priority. It had been one of the recommendations laid out in the 2021 Kaplan gender equity report, which was commissioned after the disastrous 2021 women’s NCAA Tournament (which brought attention to weight room, food, branding and other discrepancies between the men’s and women’s tournaments). The men’s units system has been in place since 1991 and is tied to the NCAA’s very lucrative deal with CBS and Turner that pays the NCAA more than $1 billion per year.
So, men’s teams will still earn significantly more per win in March Madness — approximately $2.1 million per unit, paid out to their conference over six years. That means the total pool for the men’s units program is around $277 million.
The pool for the women’s units is much smaller. It begins at $15 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year and increases by $5 million each of the next two years. It will stay at $25 million from 2027-28 onward. At that point, with a 68-team bracket, each unit would be worth approximately $190,000 over three years — nearly 40 percent of the value of the women’s tournament.
Each conference can decide how it will dole out its revenue distribution. McGlade said that the Atlantic 10 shares a portion of its revenue with all of its members but also specifically rewards the schools whose basketball programs reach the A-10 championship game and/or reach the NCAA Tournament on top of that. Horizon League commissioner Julie Roe Lach has said that her conference would use its distributions to reward schools for their strength of schedule and performance in the women’s NCAA Tournament.
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Ackerman, the Big East commissioner, said it’s not an accident that this new revenue stream originated right as college sports prepares to enter its revenue-sharing era. Beginning this summer, schools will be able to pay their athletes up to $21 million directly per year. Power-conference athletic departments are expected to spend anywhere from $12 to $15 million on football, with the remainder going toward men’s and women’s basketball (in most cases). For those not in power conferences or for those who can’t afford to spend that kind of money on an annual basis, the future for non-football programs is far murkier.
“How will schools balance the interests of their respective sports? How will they fundraise for sports if those dollars are not coming from generated athletics revenue?” Ackerman said. “This is the backdrop. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. (The unit) could boost what would otherwise be available to women’s basketball through revenue sharing. … But any school not at the top level still has work to do in terms of figuring out a revenue pathway, fan development and how to be successful on the court as the cost of doing business goes up. That’s reality.
“Do I think there’s reason to be optimistic (about women’s basketball)? I think there is, but there is a need to temper it with the reality of how all sports, including women’s basketball, are going to be impacted by the new model.”
Administrators across college sports hope that the unit program incentivizes investment from athletic departments that don’t already invest in women’s basketball at a high level. It won’t change anything at places that have been supporting women’s hoops at a championship level even without the possibility of unit payouts. South Carolina will keep paying what it needs to pay to keep its Hall of Fame coach. Other top-tier programs like Notre Dame and UConn will pay what they need to pay to have great facilities.
“It gives schools that do well in the tournament a financial benefit from doing well, and their conferences can then turn around and invest that money in expanding and enhancing their capacity to participate and compete,” Baker, the NCAA president, said. “This is an important statement about the growth of the women’s game, and it’s important that we acknowledge that and return to them and to the folks that have built this thing some of the benefits.”
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Even those who wish the units program was structured differently — the payout could have been delivered as a same-year lump sum, for example — are happy that it exists at all. The NCAA can’t reverse its decision now that it is implemented, and it is a pool of money that will only grow from here.
“Never in my career did I think we would get to this place,” Staley said last month. “The numbers reflect where we are today; I hope they don’t reflect where we are in five, ten years. Because we know that part of it allows you to be a sport — and not a sport that is always in the red, pulling on the budget always.
“So, I think it’s a great start, but it’s surely not a great finish. It’s a great start.”
