The National Collegiate Athletic Association -NCAA- has pushed the media business of college sports past the $1 billion mark this year, with March Madness as the main driver of a structure that over the past decade has deepened its reliance on March basketball while also expanding its revenue streams and commercial reach. The men’s tournament will generate $1.02 billion in media rights under the current agreement with CBS and Turner, which runs through 2032, a figure that on its own puts the competition at a revenue level comparable to what the entire tournament was generating across all business lines in 2017.

The scale of that jump is also visible across the wider NCAA. The organization closed fiscal year 2024 with record revenue of $1.38 billion, up from $1.3 billion the previous year, while its current model still relies primarily on television, marketing, and the commercial operation of championships. Even so, the relative weight of the men’s March Madness media deal within the overall business has declined over the past decade, falling from 80% of revenue in 2015 to 64% in 2025, while other revenue sources grew from $192.3 million to $575 million, according to Sportico.

The NCAA and a model built on television, marketing, and redistribution

That shift does not diminish the tournament’s central role. Instead, it redefines its place within the economics of college sports. The NCAA itself says that most of its resources come from television and marketing rights and from championships, and that a substantial share of that money is later distributed back to conferences and universities through different funding mechanisms. In fiscal year 2024-2025, the organization put television and marketing revenue at $1.1219 billion, with another $278.8 million coming from championships.

Within that structure, men’s basketball continues to play a foundational role. The NCAA allocates $141.6 million to the Basketball Performance Fund and $55.8 million to the Equal Conference Fund, two mechanisms tied to conference performance and participation in the men’s tournament. That redistribution helps explain why March Madness is not just a ratings event, but also a competition that supports the financial architecture of a large part of college sports in the United States, even as college football remains outside the NCAA’s direct balance sheet because it operates through separate structures.

The women’s tournament gains commercial value

The other major transformation in the business has come on the women’s side. In January 2024, the NCAA signed an eight-year, $920 million agreement with ESPN for the rights to 40 championships, including the women’s basketball tournament, a move that significantly raised the value of an asset that for years had been seen as undervalued within the college sports media portfolio.

That change has already reached the distribution model. Division I approved a system under which teams participating in the women’s championship will generate funds for their conferences through a structure similar to the one used in the men’s tournament. The new system starts at $15 million in 2025-2026, rises to $20 million in 2026-2027, and reaches $25 million from 2027-2028 onward, introducing for the first time a stable return model tied to competitive performance in the women’s bracket.

Betting, data, and digital business widen the tournament’s economic footprint

Alongside the media business, the NCAA has also strengthened the commercial use of the ecosystem surrounding March Madness. On April 25, 2025, it extended its agreement with Genius Sports through 2032, making the company the exclusive distributor of official data for regulated sports betting operators across all postseason tournaments. The move expands the value of the competition beyond broadcasting and links it to one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. sports market.

That environment is also reflected in betting projections. The American Gaming Association -AGA- estimated that Americans would legally wager $3.1 billion on the men’s and women’s tournaments in 2025, and that projection has risen to $3.3 billion in 2026. The figure does not flow directly into the NCAA’s income statement, but it does show the commercial scale that March Madness has reached as a media, advertising, and data product in the sports calendar of the United States.