Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Ben Portnoy, January 5th, 2024

That quaking you feel beneath your feet is coming from Indianapolis.

The NCAA this week announced a landmark eight-year deal with ESPN worth $115 million annually ($920 million total) for the broadcast rights to 40 championships — including women’s basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and more.

The move is a major one for NCAA President Charlie Baker, ESPN and those involved with the discussions. What does it all mean?

Here are a few takeaways:

NCAA avoided temptation to split up its TV package

Speculation in college sports circles in recent months centered on whether the NCAA would consider breaking out the women’s basketball tournament or the men’s and/or women’s College World Series into their own media bundle in some capacity.

Baker and his team decided against that. Why? Let him explain:

“What we had always said was we wanted the best deal for all of our championships,” Baker said when asked if the NCAA considered packaging the women’s basketball tournament separately. “If you think about it, it’s [2,300] hours of programming, which over the eight years of the deal will take place in an enormous number of settings with a whole variety of challenges and on the ground circumstances [making] this something where if you can get a production partner who’s willing to bite the whole thing of at a price that we believe is more than market competitive, we thought that was a better way to go.”

The decision to keep things bundled largely as they had been is layered. While there was a public narrative that the women’s basketball package could be healthy on its own, there was at least some fear that breaking of the most lucrative pieces of this package could devalue the remaining sports and leave them out to dry. In many media circles, both consultants and network sources shared that the value of the package was far greater with it being bundled and maintained. There are also the simple complications of having potentially more than one broadcast rights partner on these championships — more cooks in the kitchen, etc.

This isn’t to say there was lack of interest. Hillary Mandel, executive vice president and head of Americas for media at IMG, suggested there would have been plenty of interested parties should the rights have hit the open market (ESPN had an exclusive negotiating window on this deal).

Sources told Sports Business Journal that Fox Sports was among the parties that might have been interested in the rights to NCAA women’s basketball and volleyball if they were broken of, given the network’s investments in both sports in recent years.

“If you were to unbundle, the top of the package would be grabbed by everybody,” said Mandel, who consulted on the deal alongside Karen Brodkin, executive vice president and co-head of WME Sports. “But what would happen to everybody else? That’s not who the NCAA is. They don’t want to leave anybody behind.”

What does it mean for women’s basketball?

It’s a win for a number of women’s college sports, but if there’s a crown jewel in this collection of rights, it’s the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

Baker told SBJ the NCAA valued the women’s basketball tournament at $65 million annually, or roughly 56% of the total value of the media rights included in this package. That’s a big number considering the entire last deal signed with ESPN in 2011 was only worth about $40 million annually.

“The trajectory of this property, in particular women’s sports, over the past few years, is extremely positive,” said Nick Dawson, ESPN’s senior vice president of college sports programming and acquisitions. “To have the entirety for eight more years is, in our view, a great place to be.”

Detractors will say the NCAA didn’t get enough in this deal. Media consultants Ed Desser and John Kosner, who provided analysis for the “Kaplan report” on gender equity published in 2021, estimated the women’s basketball championship could generate between $81 million and $112 million in annual rights fees and suggested it would be best sold as its own entity.

Kosner said ESPN is set up to manage the tonnage of the overall rights package “and although I think both Ed and I would argue that it would be a fascinating opportunity for one of the top digital companies, it’s not clear that any really got deeply involved.”

NCAA women’s basketball viewership has grown exponentially in recent years. The NCAA women’s title game between LSU and Iowa last year drew 9.9 million viewers on ABC, compared to the 14.69 million the men’s title game featuring UConn and San Diego State brought in on CBS. The LSU-Iowa contest was also the first women’s basketball title game to air on broadcast TV under the current media rights agreement with Disney/ESPN, which began prior to the 1996 tournament, and the title game will continue to air on ABC under the terms of the new deal.

The media rights market is a tight one, with a clear bifurcation between top properties getting a rights increase and others weighing not-so-attractive options, but the NCAA still netted a deal worth three times the previous one.

“We’re seeing the fruits of many, many years of labor coming to fruition in women’s sports,” Desser said. “If you go back 25 years, women’s sports was really almost an afterthought. I think it no longer is. It’s now in the mainstream. If you can generate a [almost] 10 rating on a women’s college basketball game, then you’ve really come a long, long way.”

ESPN stays frugal, but keeps its hands in everything

Despite the issues facing Jimmy Pitaro, the leader of ESPN didn’t flinch when it came to maintaining the company’s relationship with the NCAA and its belief in college sports, and ESPN now controls the domestic rights to virtually all of the NCAA’s championships — the massive exception being the men’s basketball tournament.

The deal is set to include 2,300 hours of championship programming, 800 hours of which will be on linear ESPN platforms. That’s certainly helpful in filling air time across its various platforms, but it shows that ESPN is committed to amplifying the coverage across its networks.

“What we bring to the table here, yes it’s the studio, it’s our megaphone, it’s our brand, it’s our production quality,” Pitaro told SBJ. “But it’s first and foremost our multiplatform approach.”

ESPN has been prudent with recent deals. The network passed on the Pac-12 deal, yet it’s currently working to re-up its rights with the College Football Playof, which expire after the 2025 season. ESPN also has upcoming negotiations with the NBA and UFC.

The new deal with the NCAA is set to expire in 2032, the same year the men’s basketball rights are scheduled to hit the market. That should give the NCAA ample flexibility then, but could grant ESPN that same ability.

“Most of the time when you’re involved in a negotiation, there’s what people say at the beginning and then there’s what people say when they come back for the third time,” Baker said. “One of the things that was really impressive to me about this was ESPN, they wanted this and they were willing to work for it.”

A win for Charlie Baker and the NCAA’s forward thinking

Barely nine months into his role, Baker, the former Massachusetts governor, has been resolute in trying to bring the NCAA into the 21st century. The proposal regarding athlete compensation he unveiled at the SBJ Intercollegiate Athletics Forum last month was a monumental moment for college sports and a profound shift in thinking. Helping nab a media rights deal in a tight market is another impressive feat early in his tenure.

“We think this is a terrific opportunity and a great deal,” Baker said, “and a chance to give a ton of additional visibility through some of the elements of the agreement beyond just the money for a variety of our sports.”

The NCAA has plenty of chaos to sift through in the coming months. Myriad lawsuits regarding athlete compensation could result in major settlements and the college athlete employment debate rages on.

Still, Baker is garnering attention in a positive way — that’s significant in its own right.