Again, if you don’t TRY to make any money OF COURSE it will lose. It’s estimated that TV rights to the women’s tournament alone could be sold for 100 million. Why don’t we try it. They lump it in with the men’s tournament and then say it loses 3 million dollars. Of course it does. $0 - $2.8 mil = -2.8 mil. They also don’t sell the rights to softball but they could probably do that also. Those regional tournaments are ALWAYS sold out.
Because they’ve already been sold once and selling them again would probably be, at best, a breach of contract, and, at worst, fraud?
Well thanks for answering my question which you never bothered to do, The point I was trying to make, which you completely missed was there is a very big difference between mens and womens “team” sports and mens and womens individual sports like tennis, golf, swimming and diving, etc, although they do play “doubles” in tennis. You were lumping ALL mens and womens college sports together which I found troubling (team sports vs individual sports). For example, with the UCLA mens and womens tennis teams there is virtually no difference in money making, ticket sales, etc.
It was a response to whoever just keeps saying there's no value in the women's tournament. It's the same people over and over and over.
Yeah, I think the point is the reason why the NCAA isn’t selling the rights to the woman’s tournament as a standalone is that, for the duration of the current contract, they don’t on them. They’ve already sold the rights collectively to CBS.
The article you linked is good. Thanks for posting it. It makes a logical, but often overlooked point, that the women’s tournament ratings are suppressed by the fact that they are shown on ESPN rather than ABC or CBS. Likewise the fact that games were only broadcast regionally in the past, depressed the ratings that they might have otherwise gotten. After 2036, assuming that the broadcast rights are being sold separately, it will be interesting to see how the rating numbers change.2022 DI men's basketball championship game sets single-game viewing records
Kansas vs. North Carolina is Most-Watched NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship Game Ever on Cable Television, Up 4% vs. 2021www.ncaa.com
The national championship game between Kansas and North Carolina had 18.1M viewers.
The 2022 NCAA Men’s Tournament airing across TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV averaged 10.7 million total viewers and a 17.0 share (the percentage of households or viewers who are watching television at that time) for its 67 live game telecasts, both up 13% over last year. The 17.0 share is the best for the entire NCAA Men’s Tournament since 1994.
NCAA Women's Tournament TV rights could have different look
The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament reported strong viewership numbers this weekabcnews.go.com
South Carolina’s 64-49 victory over Connecticut on Sunday night averaged 4.85 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most-watched women’s championship game since 2004. It was also the fourth-largest audience for the title game since the network began airing the entire tournament in 1996.
The tournament overall averaged 634,000 viewers per game, a 16% increase over last year, with many of the rounds seeing their highest averages in more than 10 years. This was the second year that all games aired on at least one channel nationally instead of going to regional audiences.
The NCAA has stated that the 2025 NCAA Women's Tournament will be sold as a stand alone. The contract with ESPN ends after the 2024 Championship. I believe that means that the extension of the Men's tournament did not include the Women's tournament past the 2024 portion of the contract.
Yeah, that actually sounds correct to me. I read somewhere today, perhaps in the linked article, that it was 2036, but I think that’s the end of the ACC contract.