More Bad News For Female Athletes According To NCAA Investigation

The law firm hired by the NCAA to investigate gender equity issues released its report Tuesday night, and it’s not great news for female athletes. After examining spending for all Division 1 sports championships except basketball, the auditors found the NCAA spent $4,285 per male athlete, but only $2,588 for each female athlete. That means, for every dollar that went to a male championship athlete, only 60 cents went to a female athlete.  Much of this discrepancy has to do with which teams generate the most revenue, but the revenue argument shouldn’t be used as a smokescreen to hide all gender inequities.

The 153-page report from Kaplan, Hecker & Fink LLP (KHF) is the result of the second phase of the investigation from the firm on gender equity in the NCAA. The phase 1 report, released August 3^rd, focused primarily on gender equity in men’s and women’s college basketball championships. For the second phase, KHF assessed gender disparities in the experiences of male and female student-athletes at the NCAA’s 84 other championships.  This covers more than 500,000 student-athletes, 23 sports and three divisions.

The auditors found the gender gap was even worse for single-gender sports. The NCAA spent approximately $2,229 more per student-athlete for the men-only championships than for the women-only championships ($5,282 per student-athlete for the men and $3,053 per student-athlete for the women).  

Revenue accounts for a large portion of these gender discrepancies. “Sports in which one championship is viewed as producing significantly more revenue than its gender counterpart, stark differences in spending and staffing emerge, leading to inequitable student-athlete experiences in those championships,” the KHF authors conclude.  Not surprisingly, the revenue producers are all men’s Division 1 championships including baseball, men’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, men’s lacrosse and wrestling. “It is when those sports have women’s counterparts that we observed the greatest disparities and resulting gender inequities,” they summarize.  

Nobody is arguing that revenue shouldn’t be an important consideration in championship funding. The NCAA, after all, must sustain itself. Nonetheless, men’s sports have such a headstart in gaining fans, women’s teams need at least to be given a fair shot at attracting viewership. The first NCAA women’s championship took place in the fall of 1981, more than 75 years after the NCAA was founded. Men’s sports are bigger revenue producers, not because they’re more fun to watch, but because they had a 75-year headstart. Women’s sports have the potential to be revenue generators as well, but if they are playing on second-rate fields or rarely broadcast, they’ll never reach their full potential.

“Championships in the earlier stages of growth and development—as are many of the women’s championships—are not considered by the NCAA to be its largest, most revenue-producing championships. Nevertheless, they deserve a fair shot to get there, which they cannot do without sufficient resources,” the KHF authors conclude.

Fortunately, the report offers some affordable strategies for the NCAA to reduce the gender gap. The biggest issue seems to be the NCAA is just not set up to monitor gender inequities. Setting up systems of accountability so that the organization can track gender equity is clearly an important first step. In addition, increasing coordination in planning men’s and women’s events for the same sport can also help to reduce glaring gender inequities. 

KHF also warns against branding men’s and women’s teams differently (though they acknowledged that the NCAA has largely phased out such differentiations). “For example, in ice hockey, the NCAA Twitter account @NCAAIceHockey uses “#FrozenFour” on social media to market the men’s ice hockey championship, but “#WFrozenFour” to market the women’s championship. And the website linked on the Twitter account (ncaa.com/frozenfour) goes to the NCAA’s webpage for Division I men’s ice hockey only,” they found.

Focusing on the athlete experience is also critical according to KHF. Last June, during the College World Series, the New York Times reported that the male baseball players were offered free massages while female softball players were playing doubleheaders late into the night. These gender inequities have little to do with revenue-generating aspects of the sport and are more about athlete experience.

The current media contracts also make it nearly impossible for less profitable sports to gain sponsors. Apparently,  CBS/Turner bundles the marketing rights for all championships together with the media rights for Division I men’s basketball. This means that the cost of sponsoring championships other than men’s basketball is often prohibitive. Sports with smaller budgets should clearly be able to obtain their own smaller sponsorships, or they’ll never be able to get off the ground.

KHF’s suggestions are all low-cost solutions that would help women’s sports begin to catch up to their male counterparts. The NCAA was quick to respond to the recommendations provided in the first report, extending the use of the “March Madness” trademark to the women’s basketball championships, and implementing a zero-based budgeting system for the male and female tournaments to help spot other inequities that could be easily eliminated. Let’s hope they jump on these recommendations as well.