Good morning and thanks for spending time with NILnomics. As I told you last week, my dissertation defense is done and I’m back on the wagon writing the newsletter. Before I get into this week’s topic, I want to share an exciting announcement about a new partnership NILnomics has started:

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As promised, I'm turning to college basketball this week. With March Madness in the rearview mirror, it's a good time to compare the economics of the men's and women's games. You don't need another essay from me on the transcendence of the Caitlin Clark era — those think pieces have been written. What I want to do instead is look at a few metrics that take the pulse of how much schools are actually investing in women's basketball.

Start with the view from the Athletic Director's chair. Each year, you're handed a budget and tasked with dividing it across every sport your school sponsors. You likely carry a rough percentage allocation in your head: football takes the biggest slice, men's basketball another sizeable one, and women's basketball often lands at #3.

But when a sport explodes in popularity — as women's basketball has — does that distribution get revisited the next time around? My first visual examines exactly that: the change in budget share between FY19 (well before the Caitlin Clark Effect and COVID) and the latest available year, FY25.

Another way to look at the investment being made in women’s basketball would be to look at coach compensation. Traditionally, athletic departments have used profits to invest in facilities and coach pay. Therefore, a good way to see how much women’s basketball coaches are valued is… to see how much they’re valued.

What more is there to say about the growth of women's basketball? The latest WNBA CBA negotiations made clear the appetite for the pro game isn't slowing, and the college side looks similarly healthy. This year's national championship between UCLA and South Carolina drew 9.88 million viewers on ABC and ESPN, up 16% from last year and the third most-watched women's final on record — trailing only the 2024 Iowa-South Carolina game (18.87M) and the 2023 Iowa-LSU final (9.92M). That's evidence the audience hasn't packed up and gone home in a post-Caitlin Clark world.

The men's side still pulls bigger numbers — Michigan's win over UConn averaged 18.3 million viewers across TBS, TNT, and TruTV, a slight bump from last year's 18.1 million — but the gap is no longer the chasm it was a decade ago. And the regular season may matter even more than the title game: ESPN's 2025-26 women's regular season finished 19% above the historic 2024-25 campaign and was the most-watched on record since 2008-09. Whatever the Clark effect was, it didn't end with her departure for the WNBA — it reset the floor.

The open question is whether that interest converts into the things that actually move the financial needle: ticket sales, mainstream news coverage, and — most importantly — media rights valuations that reflect the audience women's basketball is actually delivering. The current NCAA media rights deal bundles the women's tournament with dozens of other championships, which has long been the structural reason women's basketball gets quoted at a fraction of what comparable men's properties command. Decoupling that package the next time it's up for negotiation would do more to grow the women's game than another viral moment ever could. The ratings are there. The question is whether the contracts catch up.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter. I’m so excited to be back and doing original research and analysis for all of you. Please respond to this email with any feedback - good or bad. I read it all and I want to hear what you have to say.

Until next time, have a good week.

Greg Chick

Editor-in-Chief

Also, bonus graphs:

NILnomics is an independent data-driven newsletter uncovering the real numbers behind college sports finances with sharp insights, clear visuals, and exclusive datasets. Please send any thoughts, questions, or feedback to me at [email protected] and please follow me on X @NILnomics. Don’t forget all our data is available on Kaggle, code on GitHub, and FOIA documents on GoogleDrive. See you next week!