The GIST: The gals are getting paid. On Wednesday, the NCAA voted unanimously to pay women’s college basketball teams for playing in the NCAA Tournament, a long-overdue perk men’s squads have received for years. Here’s what you need to know about the game-changing ruling.
How does it work?: The NCAA is committing $15M next year to support women’s basketball through the Women’s Basketball Equal Conference Fund and Women’s Basketball Performance Fund. Squads will earn financial rewards for each round they advance in March Madness, with reaching the Final Four potentially netting up to $1.26M.
Where does the money go?: Players and teams don’t directly benefit from the payments — instead, conferences are awarded “performance units” based on how far their teams advance. From there, the conference’s governing body decides how to distribute the funds.
- These units, which represent revenue, are awarded to conferences for each team that earns an NCAA Tournament bid, with the number of units increasing as teams advance.
- The monetary value of a unit will vary from year to year, but during the 2024 men’s tourney, a single unit was worth $2M. Cha-ching.
The impact: Women’s college hoops continue to grow, with last season’s national title game bringing in a whopping 18.7M viewers — 3M more than the men’s championship. Now, the women competing will directly benefit from the viewership and revenue they generate, finally aligning with the structure on the men’s side. About damn time.
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