A historic moment for women's basketball has been granted this year, as players who take part in March Madness will be be paid to play
Women’s basketball has taken a huge spotlight in the past year, as more attention is being put on some amazing players. Some notable players from the leagues (WNBA and NCAA) include Caitlin Clark who now plays on the Indiana Fever’s team, Angel Reese from the Chicago Sky, and Paige Bueckers who plays for the UConn Huskies. These inspiring ladies and so many more have shaped the way others see women’s sports and more specifically women's basketball. A unanimous vote was taken by the Division 1 Board of Governors back in August of 2024, then the final steps were decided in January of this year.
Now that the NCAA has agreed to pay them, what can we expect to see? How March Madness will work for the ladies will be based on performance units which will represent revenue, and will be given to the teams. Whichever women's basketball team that reaches the Final Four could bring their conference roughly $1.26 million over the next three years in financial performance rewards. The NCAA president Charlie Barker, as well as others, have given credit for the creation of this performance fund saying, “We’re the lucky ones. We got to be here on the day it became a reality”.
Another person to comment on this historic day was South Carolina women's basketball head coach, Dawn Staley. She recently led her team to victory in the 2023-2024 season. She spoke about how excited she was for the change and the future of women in sports. “This continues our fight to lift women's basketball to historic levels. I appreciate the decisions by The Kaplan Hecker and Fink law firm to include the lack of units in their report as a key issue holding women's basketball back from capitalizing on the historic viewership and quality of the product on the court.”
As we speak of history, in this first year, $15 million will be awarded to teams out of the fund. This is about 26% of the women's basketball media revenue deal. This will grow to $25 million, or 41% of the revenue by 2028. The 26% is the same as the deal that men's basketball obtained during the first year of the program being established. The following plan is similar to the men's unit program. Each of the 32 conferences that receive an automatic bid to the tournament will receive a unit, and additional units will be rewarded for teams that receive at-large bids to the 68-team field. The longer that a schools tournament run lasts, the more units the schools conference will collect. From there, the conferences will decide how to distribute the unit revenue amongst its players.
Women's basketball players are also excited about this change. Paige Bueckers, a guard from the UConn women's basketball team said, “Just for women to capitalize on what we brought to the sport and what we do for just sports in general and entertainment and just to be able to be a part of that, we are extremely grateful”. The women's tournament just came off of its most successful year ever, which included a record audience of 18.7 million viewers for the title game won by South Carolina over Iowa and Caitlin Clark, making it the highest basketball broadcast of any kind in five years. As more attention draws on women's basketball, we’re excited to see what the rest of the season brings for them.
Edited by Elsa Olano
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