Women Trounce Men In NCAA Final?

A “’trans’cendental” thought is that the popularity of women’s sport is here to stay as the NCAA women’s b-ball championship game drew 18.9M viewers vs 14.8M for the men’s final – never mind the fairer sex got 99% LESS TV MONEY.

Of course, the lopsided finals viewership victory by the women over men was fueled, at least in part, by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark’s emergence as a super-duper star for the ages. Maybe next year won’t be as compelling to folks. But, give me a break, ref, how can we understand the call this time around that gave $6.5M for the women’s tournament but $873M for the men’s? (A new deal, says the WSJ, goes into effect next season that allocates about $65M for the women’s game, yet that’s still a fraction of the men’s take.)

Explains the newspaper: “Part of the [$] disparity stems from the structure of the deals. While the men’s college-basketball tournament is sold as a stand-alone entity, the women’s is offered as part of a bundle that encompasses 40 sports championships, from volleyball to lacrosse.” Moreover, “valuing-rights deals is challenging – it’s hard to know when there will be a sudden surge in interest like the one women’s college basketball is [now] enjoying.” Then, again, while the average tournament game for the men averaged 9.9M viewers, the WSJ notes, the women averaged only 2.2M. One thing is certain, however: The Mo of women’s sports’ popularity in mainstream tv as well as society is unstoppable.

Davd Soul