In a brand new plan approved by the NCAA this January, women’s collegiate basketball teams will soon be paid for participating in March Madness, the organization’s annual national tournament. 

After a unanimous vote by NCAA membership, female athletes are taking significant steps towards a more equal pay, a reality that men’s teams have enjoyed for years. For men’s basketball teams, the NCAA awards 132 performance units per tournament, one for every game played by a team, with payments distributed over six years. 

For instance, units earned in this year’s men’s tournament will be paid out between 2025 and 2030, with each unit expected to be worth nearly $2 million. This new system for women’s teams not only represents progress but also underscores the growing recognition of the financial value of women’s basketball.

This postseason, performance units — or compensation, more simply put — will be given to the women’s teams playing in the tournament this year, 43 years after the event’s debut. Starting this season, a team that reaches the Final Four could earn its conference about $1.26 million over the next three years. 

The NCAA will distribute revenue for the women’s March Madness tournament in a similar fashion to the men’s program, by awarding each of the 32 conferences with an automatic tournament bid of one “unit.” Additional units will then be awarded to individual conferences for each team that is selected as an at-large bid to the 68-team field.

The longer a school lasts in the tournament, the more units its conference will receive. Then, conferences will decide how much unit revenue to distribute to each of its members. In the men’s 2024 tournament, for example, each unit was worth roughly $2 million. 

In the first year of women’s March Madness tournament pay, $15 million will be awarded to teams in total, equal to 26% of the women’s basketball media revenue deal that provides the necessary financial backing for such payouts. In 2028, that number will grow to $25 million, or 41% of the current revenue deal. The 26% is on par with what men’s basketball teams received the year the performance units program was established — in 1990. 

Stars like University of Connecticut (UConn) guard and 2024 Big East player of the year Paige Bueckers told ESPN she felt confident in what she described as a huge step toward helping women’s basketball grow.

“Just for women to capitalize on what we brought to the sport and what we do for just sports in general and entertainment and just to be able to be a part of that, we’re extremely grateful,” Bueckers said.

At the conference where the women’s March Madness pay was decided, two major proposals were discussed, broken into two final votes. The first proposal, on the payments being earned starting with the next NCAA tournament, received a “no” vote. 

The second, however, which established the fund from which the performance units will be delegated, received a unanimous “yes” vote from all 292 members present. As a result of the two decisions, teams making this March’s NCAA tournament won’t actually be paid until officials are able to analyze data from every game so that there is an established and robust process to calculate and distribute the funds fairly and precisely.

On Jan. 4, ESPN and the NCAA announced a joint $920 million dollar television deal, which suggested that performance units could enter the women’s basketball league as early as this year, given its reflection of a significant financial investment and increasing commercial interest in the sport. 

An NCAA spokeswoman told the Washington Post that her finance committee began working on potential models for implementation in the women’s tournament last April, as questions arose about when the program would start, what the value of each unit would be and how and when players would be paid.

Women’s collegiate basketball is coming off of its most successful year ever, which included a record 18.7 million viewers watching the championship game, where South Carolina triumphed over the Iowa Hawkeyes and star player Caitlin Clark. 

The women’s game exceeded viewership numbers for the men’s championship by almost 3 million viewers, where UConn took home its second national championship over Purdue 

University of South Carolina Gamecocks, who went undefeated last year and took home the national championship, coach Dawn Staley told ESPN that her first thought hearing of the vote was a clear and concise, “YES!” 

“This continues our fight to lift women’s basketball to historic levels,” Staley told ESPN in an interview.

The historic move by the NCAA signals a turning point for women’s college basketball, one that serves as a recognition of the immense talent, effort and increasing popularity of the league. With viewership at an all-time high and current and former stars like Bueckers and UConn, Clark and Iowa, and more inspiring female athletes in all leagues, the sport is poised for even greater growth. 

As conferences and teams begin to benefit from performance units, fans continue to hope that this momentum will extend beyond just basketball, paving the way towards equity across all collegiate sports.