Women’s sports have experienced a watershed moment in recent years, as TV audiences increase and professional leagues like the WNBA and NWSL continue to grow. 

That momentum extends to college sports as well, where women’s college basketball has fought for equal treatment with its counterparts in the men’s game. The results: Some improvements in terms of facilities and amenities for the NCAA Tournament, expanded use of “March Madness” marks and terminology, moving the women’s championship game to ABC and a growing realization that the women’s tourney is severely undervalued.

And while all of that is progress, the exposure gaps haven’t been fixed overnight, and women’s college basketball is still being deprioritized despite its viability as a larger media property.

Last year’s Kaplan report, created by the law firm the NCAA retained to review its gender equity issues, found that the Division I NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament alone could be worth between $81 million and $112 million on its own in annual media rights. The event is currently bundled with the rest of ESPN’s NCAA championship rights, which it pays about $36 million per year for. So it’s clearly a steep discount, and one that can be perpetuated by how women’s games are packaged for TV during the regular season.

Looking at iSpot data for the 2022-23 college basketball regular season, first-airing men’s college basketball games delivered more ads across national linear TV and RSNs than any other program (over 123K). Those ads amounted to 2.40% of all TV ad impressions (live programming only) from Nov. 7, 2022-Mar. 12, 2023 – No. 3 overall in that stretch, trailing only the NFL and college football.

Women’s games, however, had just under 31K airings and 0.17% of TV ad impressions. No, the math doesn’t create parity between the two sports, even if you extrapolate women’s college basketball airings to be equal to the men. But part of that also comes from when these games are taking place. For instance, iSpot can shed light on days of the week and dayparts where games (and ad airings) appear.

Men’s games

Women’s games

The major differences here should be clear: 39% of ad airings during women’s college basketball games appear on weekend afternoons, and 38% appear on Sundays. For most of the season, it’s running up against TV’s biggest tentpole property, the NFL. Of course women’s basketball games can’t deliver more impressions in those timeslots – no program on TV can, because the NFL has attention locked down already.

Meanwhile, 37% of men’s college basketball ad airings are in primetime, and 32% are on Saturdays (which get much clearer from an attention standpoint once college football’s regular season wraps up). So the games are getting more optimal windows with minimal competition.

Which networks these airings appear on also plays a part here, and that’s informative as well. As iSpot data reveals, 34% of men’s college basketball household TV ad impressions appeared on ESPN, 15% on CBS and 7% on Fox. For the women’s games, 21% of TV ad impressions were delivered by ESPN, with 10% on Fox and 7% on ABC.

None of this is meant to imply malice by the networks from a programming perspective. It’s more to point out that given the programming environment, of course this is the result. And that’s in 2022-23, when there’s more awareness of the issues stemming from the long-standing inequity. The scales were tipped even more in favor of the men’s games for decades leading up to today.

Women’s sports audiences can keep growing, though, if media companies and other content owners are willing to make those investments. Brands are finding new and more impactful ways to sponsor women’s sports. Networks are slowly but surely putting a greater emphasis on airing women’s sports – and women’s college basketball, in particular. 

Outlets like The Athletic, ESPN and others have invested more heavily in written coverage. And social content has rallied around women’s sports as well. Tubular Labs data from 2021 revealed that U.S. YouTube views around women’s sports rose 83% during the pandemic.

This year’s women’s tournament will be an informative one for what happens next. With more coverage than ever before and a championship game on ABC, there’s certain to be increased eyeballs on the sport this March. 

It comes at exactly the right time, too. With Disney’s media rights deal with the NCAA coming up in 2024, the parties are heading back to the negotiating table soon (if not already). After ESPN lost the Big Ten’s rights, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament would seem to be a top priority to retain along with the other NCAA championships. Those rights – potentially sold separately – are just highly unlikely to be at a discount this time around.