This Article appeared Yesterday, Aug 3, 2021 on the AP news web site.
Sounds interesting.
https://apnews.com/article/sports-march-...200219cf7c

I read the executive summary of the Kaplan report and it is quite interesting, and hope to find time to read the whole report. https://kaplanhecker.app.box.com/s/6fpd5...h0b0o95oxq The idea of a combined final 4 has some merit, but it is really just a patch to make it more transparent that the men's and women's players (in the final 4) get treated equally. It doesn't do anything to address all the other major issues that the report identifies.

The thing that is most bizarre about the inequities is that CBS owns the media rights to only the MBB championship, but they also have the contract that manages the sponsorship deals for every NCAA championship - reportedly 90 of them. So, trying to maximize their own revenue, they require any company wanting to sponsor any specific championship to first buy sponsorship rights to the MBB championship, and they charge a fortune for that privilege. So, smaller companies that might want to sponsor just the WBB championship (or any of the other 88 ones) are effectively priced out of that. On top of that, since ESPN has the broadcast rights to all the other champs, anyone wanting to take out TV ad spots during one of those has to first pay CBS for the sponsorship rights, and then pay ESPN for the ad time. It's no wonder the WBB championships can't get big dollar sponsorship deals. Until they fix that (at the next contract cycle probably) there is no way the inequities are gonna really get addressed.

I have a good friend that follows major women’s cbb closely. His suggestion has been to move the women’s tournament out to Vegas starting with the sweet 16 or elite 8. Make it an annual destination. Increased interest with gambling as well I’d suspect.