NCAA’s Charlie Baker expects decisions on women’s basketball tournament media rights by end of 2023

DALLAS — On the heels of the most-watched women’s college basketball game ever, NCAA president Charlie Baker said Monday that he expects decisions regarding the future of the women’s tournament to be made by the end of December.

“This is a big opportunity for us to do to do well by sports that are doing well by all of us and to make sure that, coming out of this, we end up with what I would describe as the best possible deal we can make for all of these sports,” Baker said at the LEAD1 Association’s spring meeting. “My guess is that the process of this will probably be done sometime around the end of the calendar year. … It’s a giant opportunity, and we better not blow it.”

Currently, the NCAA women’s basketball tournament is part of a packaged media deal with ESPN, worth roughly $34 million per year, to broadcast all of the Division I championships except FBS football, men’s basketball (domestic rights) and men’s and women’s golf. The contract expires at the end of the 2023-24 academic year.

Experts have speculated that the women’s tournament would bring enough value on its own to justify spinning it off as a separate media rights package moving forward. The 2021 Kaplan report, citing an independent analysis by media experts, suggested that the women’s tournament on its own was greatly undervalued and could be worth as much as $112 million annually by 2025. Others in the industry have disputed that number.

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The NCAA has hired Endeavor to help it determine whether the women’s basketball tournament should remain bundled with all of the other championships or not. Some athletic directors have also asked that other growing sports, such as baseball, softball and women’s volleyball, receive similar consideration.

During the Final Four weekend, Baker told reporters that the timing of the media rights negotiations was “perfect” for women’s basketball, which experienced record-setting viewership numbers this season and returns its biggest stars this fall.

“Let’s see what the market thinks it’s worth,” Baker said earlier this month. “I think the market is going to think it’s worth a lot.”

Required reading

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• Women’s college basketball too-early top 25: Who lands at the top? UConn or LSU?
• Should NCAA Tournament expand for women’s basketball? ‘I think it would be terrible’

(Photo: Mercedes Oliver / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)