For over 20 years, fans of softball, baseball, women’s basketball, and more than 20 other college sports have known where the NCAA Championships are taking place on ESPN’s various channels.
This arrangement worked out well for both parties. The NCAA ensures top athletes hit the national stage, and ESPN has added hundreds of hours of live programming to its collegiate sports portfolio centered around college football and men’s basketball games.
A sign of just how happy the NCAA and ESPN were in their partnership came in 2011 when the NCAA agreed to a 13-year, $500 million contract renewal without acquiring the marketing rights.
But now that deal expires after a year, so the next media rights deal for those 31 championships could be very different from the current one, which has been widely criticized as being undervalued. are on the rise (especially when it comes to featured events). , Division I women’s basketball tournament.
Charlie Baker, who became the new NCAA president in March, noted the upcoming negotiations, saying last week at a symposium on college sports, “We are significantly underperforming across many other income-boosting opportunities. ’ he admitted sternly.
Growing interest in women’s basketball has put increasing pressure on the NCAA to sell tournament rights on its own, rather than bundle them with other championships. According to one analyst, doing so could yield about $100 million in annual profits. However, such a separation risks leaving other sports on lesser-known platforms.
And while a women’s basketball tournament with record attendance and TV ratings is about to hit the market at a seemingly perfect time, broadcasters continue their subscriber drain from cable to streaming. The industry is in turmoil as it undergoes a transition of The platform still has a much smaller audience.
There are many things for the NCAA to consider. Has interest changed at ESPN, where parent company Disney is laying off 7,000 jobs? What about other networks like CBS and NBC that have fewer cable networks but have nascent streaming platforms? Could streaming-only companies also be players?
The NCAA declined to interview Mr. Baker or others, saying in a statement, “We are open to any and all new and creative ideas, including potential sole contracts, to generate revenue to support student-athletes and athletes.” ) will be accepted,” he said. Continue to grow all sports, including women’s basketball. ”
The NCAA has hired global sports media company Endeavor to help develop a negotiation strategy that has yet to begin. Baker said he expects the rights deal to close around the end of the year.
“The NCAA is a very political organization and we live in a different political world than we did 10, 15, 20 years ago when these deals were closed,” said a sports media analyst who previously advised the NCAA. Chris Bevilacqua of The List said. About media rights. “The NCAA has 500,000 student-athletes, half of whom are women. prize.”
The pressure stems from the 2021 NCAA Basketball Gender Equality Review, which was commissioned following the identification of wide disparities between the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments during the pandemic.
Sports media analyst Ed Desser said in a report that if the rights to the women’s tournament were sold on their own, the 2025 tournament could fetch between $81 million and $112 million. I assumed there was.
ESPN paid nearly $50 million for 31 championships this year, including the women’s basketball title match, which drew a record 9.9 million viewers on ABC.
“The value has only increased” since the estimate two years ago, Desser said in an interview. He cited growing interest in women’s professional basketball and soccer leagues, as well as increased attention to women’s tournaments.
Still, growing interest in women’s sports has not necessarily led to higher broadcasting rights fees. In football, for example, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has threatened to cut power to several European countries during this summer’s Women’s World Cup. before the deal is signed this week. The broadcaster was reluctant to meet FIFA’s asking price for a match sold as a stand-alone asset for the first time. Previously, qualification to the Men’s World Cup was bundled.
The past 30 years of women’s basketball history have been dotted with ups and downs and plateaus. Connecticut’s rise as a foil to Tennessee fit in perfectly with the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where the United States won gold, and whose staggering run saw her a year later with her NBA backing. Contributed to the establishment of the WNBA.
By 2012, interest in the college sport had stagnated, and the NCAA asked Val Ackerman, the first president of the WNBA, to research ways to increase interest in the game.
The murder of George Floyd has sparked a wave of social activism in the United States, as many sports have been canceled during the pandemic. The WNBA and women’s college basketball leaned toward this, questioning many of the differences between the WNBA and the men’s version of women’s college basketball, especially the unfair weight room (and coronavirus testing) during the 2021 men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. . More recently, another cause emerged: WNBA star Britney Griner’s detention in Russia.
All of this came as NCAA rules barring athletes from entering into sponsorship deals were eased. This further amplified the individuality of the top women’s university players. Women players, unlike men, are not allowed to enter the WNBA until they turn 22 (in their draft year) or graduate from college. In recent years, players such as Sabrina Ionescu, Paige Backers, Aliya Boston and Kaitlyn Clarke have become nationally known.
Ackermann said of the WNBA’s launch that it “was saying it could take a generation” to get a foothold. Will there be more tickets with higher prices? Will sponsors end up paying higher royalties? That’s the test here. That is what is being put into the market. ”
But now is a complicated time to market.
Cable TV subscriber numbers continue to plummet, and even though emerging streaming platforms continue to build subscriber bases, there are still far more cable viewers than streaming viewers. (ESPN has subscribed to 72.5 million households this month, according to Nielsen. ESPN+ has 25.3 million subscribers, a spokesperson said.)
Such uncertainty could result in a shortened contract with the NCAA.
American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresko, a former CBS and ESPN executive, said media companies generally prefer 10-year or longer contracts, allowing them to focus on strengthening television broadcasts rather than renegotiating rights.
But long-term deals keep the Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast conferences far behind the Big Ten, who in 2017 decided to renew their media rights for just six years, giving them $7 billion over seven years starting this football season. Ended up signing a deal near the dollar. . It’s also hard to predict what the world of streaming and cable will look like in five years, let alone ten years from him.
“Everyone is rethinking how far we can go,” said Aresco. “It’s not an exact science. In fact, it’s probably more art than science.”
Even if the money ends up going to the same place and eventually back in the university’s coffers, conference media rights deals are fundamentally different than what the NCAA sells. Conference agreements extend throughout the season, but the NCAA sells playoff and championship events condensed into days or weeks.
Women’s basketball tournaments also have another compelling selling point. It takes place over his three weeks in March and early April, when most broadcasters are craving content. Between the Super Bowl and Masters golf tournaments in mid-February and the start of the professional basketball and hockey playoffs in mid-April, there’s nothing short of a basketball tournament. The rights to the men’s tournament are owned by CBS and Turner.
“The women’s basketball tournament is ESPN’s most rated event from mid-February to mid-April,” Desser said. “This is important, especially in a world where monthly subscriptions are becoming more and more popular. People used to stay in touch every month, but now it takes a competitive edge to stay in the decision-making set. I need something.”
Despite the ever-increasing professionalism of college sports, future negotiations will likely be different from professional sports leagues.
For example, the NFL may be expected to withdraw all the last money from contracts. The NCAA will have other considerations, despite Mr. Baker’s assertion that the board must improve to increase revenue.
“This is a conversation of principles,” said Julie Law Luck, Horizon League commissioner and member of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee. “It’s not just about the money. It’s not that simple which network brings in the most revenue. It takes real commitment to grow the game.”
In an era where athletes can make money from endorsements, such growth could come from ways broadcasters can help athletes reach wider audiences through media other than television, she said. added.
Law Luck is one of those who believes that separating women’s basketball will give other sports the opportunity to grow on their own.
Perhaps the World Series of college baseball is appealing to MLB networks, or another network is niche, like the SEC network, which broadcasts gymnastics on Friday nights to boost the sport’s popularity in the South. It may support sports.
Julie Cromer, athletic director at Ohio University and co-chair of the committee that rewrote the NCAA’s rules last year, believes the Olympic sport is a natural candidate for increased visibility. She pointed to her time at the University of Arkansas. There, the university’s indoor track team drew thousands of fans to its home competition, prompting the university to live stream the event.
The NCAA could act as an incubator, she said.
Many of these sports have loyal fan bases, and reaching that fan base doesn’t necessarily have to be achieved through linear broadcasting,” Cromer said.
One such sport would be lacrosse. Far down the sports food chain, it is based in the northeast, but decades of expansion west has been slow. When ESPN aired the men’s and women’s championships back-to-back on Memorial Day, it added a festive atmosphere to the event.
“Lacrosse has been looking for that for a long time,” said Joe Sparina, Stony Brook University’s women’s coach. The university’s regular-season game against top-ranked Syracuse was televised on ESPNU. “This is one of the problems he has in the growth of the sport. Everyone wants to be at the top quickly.”
