The NCAA on Thursday said it had reached an eight-year agreement with ESPN worth $115 million annually to televise 40 college sports championships each year, including the marquee Division I women’s basketball tournament that many people within college sports had hoped would be primed for even bigger returns given a wave of recent popularity.
The $920 million deal ended several years of speculation and debate about how the NCAA could capitalize on an influx of fans in women’s sports, including basketball. Powerful teams like South Carolina and UConn and star players like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Sabrina Ionescu have created higher expectations for a sport that has earned much less money than men’s college basketball and college football, counterparts that have received far higher investments from universities and media companies for nearly a century.
The NCAA’s current contract with ESPN, which was extended in 2011 and runs through the end of this season, brings in $34 million per year and includes 29 championships. A report in 2021, commissioned because of complaints about glaring differences between the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, suggested that the women’s tournament could earn at least $81 million in the first year of a new deal — if it…
