The NCAA on Friday acknowledged for the first time that its budget for the Division I men’s basketball tournament is nearly twice its budget for the women’s tournament.
But in a summary of financial data first provided to The New York Times and ESPN, and later obtained by Yahoo Sports, the NCAA attempted to justify that budget disparity, and said that its 2019 women’s basketball tournament lost $2.8 million, the “largest loss of any NCAA championship” event.
The NCAA released figures for its 2019 basketball tournaments, the last ones unaffected by the pandemic, amid uproar over inequities between its 2021 men’s and women’s tournaments.