Women’s college basketball teams to be paid for playing in the NCAA Tournament

The GIST: The gals are getting paid. On Wednesday, the NCAA unanimously voted to pay women’s college basketball teams for playing in the NCAA Tournament, a long-overdue perk men’s squads have received for years. Here’s what you need to know about the game-changing decision.

How does it work?: The NCAA will commit $15M to support women’s basketball through the Women’s Basketball Equal Conference Fund and Women’s Basketball Performance Fund next year. Squads will earn financial rewards for each round they advance to in March Madness.

• Teams will begin accruing units (more on that in a sec) during this year’s tourney, which will be distributed beginning in 2026.

Where will the money go?: Players and teams don’t directly benefit from the payments. Instead, conferences are awarded “performance units” — aka revenue — based on how far their teams advance. From there, the conference’s governing body decides how to distribute the funds.

• The monetary value of a unit will vary from year to year, but a single unit was worth $2M during the 2024 men’s tourney. Cha-ching.

The impact: Women’s college hoops continue to grow, with last season’s national title game bringing in a whopping 18.7M viewers — 4M more than the men’s championship. Now, the women competing will benefit from the viewership and revenue they generate, finally aligning with the structure on the men’s side. About damn time.