Second NCAA gender equity report shows spending disparities
The NCAA spends more on average on male athletes than female ones, particularly when it comes to the “mere handful of championships” viewed as revenue sources, according to a new report.
The law firm hired by the NCAA to investigate equity issues released its 153-page report Tuesday night, which includes a series of recommendations to improve the gap among all sports tournaments. It’s the second report from the firm, following its Aug. 3 one that recommended how to equalize men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
The NCAA has implemented some of those, in
cluding allowing the women’s tournament to use the term “March Madness.”
“The same structural and cultural issues that impact Division I basketball pervade the NCAA and have shaped its treatment of other championships,” the report said. “The NCAA membership’s heavy reliance on the money it receives from NCAA revenue distributions has placed pressure on the NCAA to maximize that revenue and minimize spending so that more funds can be distributed to the membership.”
Tuesday’s report shows spending per Division I and national championship participants, excluding basketball, was about $1,700 less for women’s participants than men’s in 2018-19. The NCAA spent $4,285 per men’s participant versus $2,588 per women’s participant.
The gap is even greater in the six single-gender sports like wrestling and beach volleyball — $2,229 more per student-athlete for the men’s championships than for the women’s.
The review also found that sports with combined their championships have fared better on gender equality.
“We have seen that combining at least some portion of the men’s and women’s championship for a given sport enables more coordinated planning, increases equity in the goods and services, facilities, and resources provided at the championships and eliminates or reduces disparities between the ‘look and feel’ of the tournaments,” the report said.
Another piece of the report shows NCAA doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to encourage equal sponsorships at all championships.
“The report identified important recommendations, which we will prioritize and sequence so they can be implemented for impactful change,” the NCAA Board of Governors said in a statement on the institution’s website. “These changes may require altering budgets and business models while evaluating the balance between resources devoted to championships that produce revenue and resources for those that do not.”
The review was done by Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, which was hired in March after the NCAA failed to provide similar amenities to the teams in the men’s and women’s Division I basketball tournaments.