💐 An Ode to the Women's Game

It’s time to give women’s basketball their flowers.

What a weekend! After the South Carolina Gamecocks defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes in the National Championship to put the cherry on top of their undefeated season, we can officially look back and say we witnessed titans of the sport going at it, controversial calls, legendary performances, and some dapper get-ups throughout the tournament. The women’s game has provided us with storylines galore and unfortunately we’ll need to find a new cast of characters to replace the stars that have changed the sport. But before we get into talks about next year, let’s review the year that was. The increased popularity, a new media rights deal, and how the pros can take advantage of an incredible blueprint. Let’s get after it…

How successful has this women’s college basketball season been?

• Easily the most successful season ever! Heading into the Final Four, viewership was already up by ~130% from the previous year. And then…

• Sunday’s national championship game averaged 18.7M viewers, hitting its peak of 24M, ESPN said on Monday. It was the most watched basketball game since 2019, beating the ratings for every sporting event outside of football and the Olympics in that period.

  • If we put the NFL aside, because those numbers are incomparable, Sunday’s title game outperformed nearly all major sports telecasts from 2023 😱 (see: Table 1).

• At the time, Friday night's Final Four matchup between Iowa and UConn, was the most-watched women's college basketball game ever, and broke ESPN's record as the most-watched basketball game in the network's history, with 14.2M viewers and a peak of 17M.

• According to TickPick, the "get-in" price for the women's national championship was $555 (yes, that was also a record if you’re keeping score at home).

What’s on the horizon for the new media rights deal?

• We’ve hit on this before, but just after the new year, ESPN and the NCAA announced an 8-year, $920M agreement to give ESPN exclusive rights to 40 college sports championships, including the DI women's basketball tournament. The deal is worth over $115M annually — women’s basketball, alone, is valued at $65M annually.

  • What’s even more interesting with this deal, is the potential implementation of the prize-money distribution system (i.e. units) — the men’s tournament has had this in place for years, and now the women’s programs could be able to benefit!

    • A units system isn’t just a way to award more money to schools to invest in their women’s basketball teams; it can also be used to incentivize athletic departments to spend more with the hopes of earning units in the future 👏.

• ESPN’s current media contract covering women’s March Madness, which expires this fall, will have paid out an average of ~$34M each year for those games, plus more than two dozen other collegiate championships included in the deal.

  • It’s safe to say, ESPN had the foresight to see where the women’s game was going and jumped at the opportunity to become a long-term partner with the sport.

What can the WNBA do to cash in on the talent influx about to come its way?

• Currently, the league earns about $60M annually from its TV and streaming deals with ABC-ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, CBS, and ION. As of now, they are in a joint negotiation with the NBA and Walt Disney Company (owners of ABC and ESPN) — since both league media rights deals are up in 2025.

• But the real question is what CAN the WNBA do? Do they really need to be part of a joint negotiation? Let’s take a look at the numbers…

  • The WNBA just posted its most-watched season in 21 years, averaging 462,000 viewers per game across national TV partners ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and CBS — up 21% over last year.

  • On ABC alone, regular-season games averaged 627,000 viewers.

  • The league also had its most-watched WNBA Finals in 20 years, averaging 728,000 viewers per game — a 36% year-over-year increase.

  • As far as the live gate, the league’s average attendance rose 16% to 6,615 fans per game, the highest figure since 2018.

• Because let’s be real…with the Caitlin Clark Effect making its move to the WNBA and the recent spike of women’s basketball viewing (both in the WNBA and March Madness), there might not be a better time to negotiate separately.

  • According to former ESPN executive John Kosner, the league will try to push its annual media-rights payout to between $80M and $100M — and that was before we saw record-breaking viewership numbers coming from the women’s Final Four (yep, we might need to increase those numbers a bit more 😉).

• It’s your move WNBA Commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.

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Quick Hitters

• 📹 The guys who brought you insane trick shots, sport stunt videos, and constant yelling through the screen you contemplated ear plugs before watching, Dude Perfect, (~60M YouTube subscribers), announced a strategic partnership with private investment firm Highmount Capital. It will include a nine-figure capital investment that will allow the group to build headquarters in Texas to serve as a destination for fans, athletes, and other content creators. They are among the most followed entities on YouTube, owning the second-most followed sports channel on the platform behind WWE. They are also in the process of developing a streaming app to further engage with the fans. And they are involved in a new ESPN 30 for 30 documentary which is set to premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival later this month.

• 🌪️ Another sports media tornado might be amongst us. David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance Media and son of billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, is making a push to acquire National Amusements, the Shari Redstone family company that controls CBS parent Paramount Global. In a complex two-stage transaction now under discussion, Redstone would receive more than $2B in cash. Paramount Global would then acquire Skydance in an all-stock deal worth about $5B, with David Ellison likely leading the new entity. Nothing is final yet, but if Ellison is able to complete the deal, it would bring under one corporate umbrella a media company that has rights to the NFL, half of men’s March Madness, several top college conferences, the Masters, and other assets as well.

• 🃏 On Monday, sports business journalist Darren Rovell launched Cllct (pronounced “collect”), a media website that will cover the sports collectibles industry. Cllct raised $4M from many high-worth individuals including, David Blitzer’s Bolt Venture, Gabe Plotkin’s Tallwoods Capital, and Roger Ehrenberg’s Eberg Capital. Cllct’s coverage will mostly focus on news in the multibillion-dollar sports collectibles and memorabilia industry and will also feature a TV network called, Cllctv.