Dawn Staley calls for more money from ESPN in women’s basketball TV deal
Dawn Staley’s book tour made a stop in Columbia on Thursday night. During the moderated discussion of her book, “Uncommon Favor,” she was asked what she sees in the future of women’s sports.
The Gamecocks head coach responded with a call to action for ESPN.
“I just got back from our (SEC) spring meetings and we talked about how we can move our game forward in this space,” Staley told the crowd. “… I said, we’re at our most popular, we’re at our most in demand ever in the history of our game. So if you’re successful, like if I’m successful here at South Carolina, if we win another national championship, what should happen?”
Someone in the crowd answered Staley’s question with, “More money!”
“Exactly,” Staley responded.
“So women’s basketball should get …” Staley asked the crowd again.
“More money!” nearly all of the roughly 1,000 people in attendance shouted back.
The NCAA reached an eight-year media rights deal with ESPN in January 2024 that is valued at $115 million annually. The deal allows ESPN to televise 40 college sports championships, including the D-I women’s basketball tournament.
The women’s basketball portion of the bundle is valued at $65 million per year under the agreement. For context, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery pays roughly $900 million per year to televise just the D-I men’s basketball tournament on CBS and Turner networks.
Staley suggested leaders negotiate for more money from ESPN for women’s college basketball. She even said the same for the WNBA — which announced an 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and new rights holder NBCUniversal in 2024 that begins in 2026.
“We should get more money from ESPN,” Staley said. “We’re in a television deal where when we signed the deal three or four years ago, we weren’t where we are today. Let’s go back to the table and let’s talk about where we are today. Let’s negotiate in good faith, because where we’ll be five years from now, right, we’ll think about you all coming back to the table today and maybe not hit you so hard in five years. So that’s what I would want. I want ESPN to step up to the plate and give us a little bit more from collegiately to the WNBA.”
The rise in popularity of women’s sports, specifically women’s basketball, over the last few years has been well-documented.
The 2024 national championship game between South Carolina and Iowa — which Staley and the Gamecocks won — recorded an audience of 18.7 million viewers. It was the most-watched basketball-related broadcast of any kind in five years at the time and outdrew the men’s college basketball national title game by nearly three million viewers.
This year’s national title game between South Carolina and UConn had the third-largest audience since ESPN began televising it in 1996.
Both Staley and UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said at the Final Four this year that they believe women’s basketball should have its own TV deal, rather than be part of the 40-sport bundle.
“I think we’re at our most popular state,” Staley said Thursday. “We’re in high demand. I do feel like we need to capitalize right now.”
This story was originally published May 30, 2025 at 7:30 AM.
