Oklahoma players celebrate their WCWS four-peat. Oklahoma players celebrate their WCWS four-peat. (Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman, via USA Today Sports.)
ESPNNCAABy Andrew Bucholtz on

Heading into 2024, there was a ton of discussion on what would happen for the wide bundle of NCAA championship rights outside of football and men’s basketball. Many argued that some of the most popular sports like women’s basketball should be spun off separately, while others countered that their inclusion was necessary to get an overall deal and a TV presence for less-prominent sports.

In the end, the NCAA opted to stick with the bundle and stick with ESPN’s networks and streaming platforms as its home. They agreed on that deal (which will kick in this September) in January. And while that move drew criticism from some women’s basketball figures in particular, it also drew some praise, including from analysts focused on the value ESPN obtained here (including former ESPN president John Skipper). And the latest indication of how well this could work out for ESPN comes from a different college sport entirely: softball.

There, Wednesday’s opening game of the Women’s College World Series between the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners drew massive numbers on ESPN and ESPN+. And so did Thursday’s concluding game, where the Sooners wrapped up a sweep for an unprecedented fourth-straight title. That led to 24 percent year-over-year growth, and to ESPN setting records.

To be clear, this was not college softball coming out of nowhere. The sport saw strong growth last year as well, as covered extensively here. Oklahoma’s third-straight win was part of that. That led to softball being cited in year-end wrapups on women’s sports, and tagged as a potential source of big ratings heading into this year’s postseason. Here’s an excerpt from that latter piece, from AA contributor Allison Smith:

After all, it is no easy feat to shatter records multiple years in a row, but softball has been conquering this feat for quite some time.

Viewership for the Women’s College World Series (WCWS) has held at 800,000 viewers or higher for the last decade. The WCWS final recorded 1.85 million views in 2021 and passed the Men’s College World Series (CWS) championship with 1.6 million views in 2022. Last season, the WCWS finale drew an average of nearly 1.9 million viewers and peaked at 2.3 million on ESPN. This is in large part due to the investment from ESPN, as they air nearly 3,200 regular-season NCAA Division I softball games.

There’s an interesting note on the number of regular-season games aired, which perhaps speaks to some of what does work for NCAA women’s sports with this ESPN deal. ESPN has remarkable platform depth and commitment to airing regular-season contests. That’s true on their linear networks (including conference networks), but especially on over-the-top streaming service ESPN+.

An ESPN release in January promoted nearly 200 linear softball games, with the remainder of that nearly 3,200 number on ESPN+. Of course, not all of those broadcasts are ESPN productions; some on ESPN+ in particular are in-house university ones the network merely provides the platform for. But the one-company setup here does have significant advantages for softball fans; yes, there are multiple subscriptions needed (with ESPN not offering an over-the-top option for its linear networks yet, a multichannel video provider is still needed in addition to an ESPN+ subscription if you want to see all games), but there is massive tonnage here with one company.

And ESPN does have their own talent working on college softball all year. And that’s not just with calling games, but also appearing on things like their Beth Mowins-hosted 7Innings podcast. That means when they get to the playoffs and eventually the WCWS, they have proven talent with significant reps all ready to go, and usually with lots of experience calling the teams involved.

That wouldn’t necessarily be the case if this championship was at another network. The scale of ESPN, and their commitment to airing regular-season contests, remains a differentiator amongst their national competitors. NBC, CBS, Fox, or even cable-only outlets like Warner Bros. Discovery, certainly could provide coverage of a desirable event like the WCWS, and they might make a compelling offer for that.

But NBC, CBS, and WBD have been much more limited to date in how much of less-prominent leagues’ regular-season content they’re eager to stream. And Fox doesn’t really have an over-the-top sports streaming service yet. On the linear side, NBC closed down its cable network a couple of years back, and Fox is showing fewer and fewer notable live games on their cable networks.

Thus, while WCWS coverage could maybe look similar in tonnage elsewhere, it’s not clear that the run-up to it would get as much coverage under a different deal. And the extensive regular-season and postseason coverage under the ESPN umbrella does seem helpful, both with ratings and with quality of coverage. So the current setup seems to work out all right for softball.

For the NCAA, that argument’s perhaps expanded further when it comes to less prominent sports. This deal covers 21 women’s and 19 men’s championships across sports. And the less-followed sports in particular would really be unlikely to draw much money or broadcasting reach on their own.

Yes, the way ESPN covers other sports is not necessarily perfect. And it’s still going to draw criticism at times. But it’s hard to see another media partner that would provide comparable coverage for most of the championships here. And that’s why ex-ESPN executive Carol Stiff, who helped come up with this bundle, criticized the idea of spinning off women’s basketball to Sports Business Journal’s Michael Smith last fall:

“This is a pivotal time in women’s sports,” said Stiff, a women’s basketball Hall of Famer who retired from ESPN in 2021. “I’m not in favor of breaking up the bundle. Not only do you have the crown jewel in women’s basketball, but look at the growth of the other sports — softball, volleyball, gymnastics. All of that comes into play. And not just women’s sports either – look at what the NCAA and ESPN have done together in baseball and lacrosse, just to name a couple. This is about assigning a value for comparison purposes – the value for the whole is much stronger together.

“Let’s say you take women’s basketball out of it and those rights go somewhere else besides ESPN, what happens then? Who’s going to do for those championships what ESPN has done, not just in the championships, but in the regular season as well? Do not undervalue the thousands of hours produced on ABC/ESPN networks.”

In the end, that does seem to be something the NCAA values. That’s probably at least part of why they kept top sports like women’s basketball in the bundle and stuck with ESPN for it. That isn’t necessarily maximizing women’s basketball (although it’s set to get the lion’s share of direct distributions from this deal, it may have drawn even more on its own). But it can be seen as maximizing these sports overall, especially if the amount of coverage is considered in addition to raw dollars. And while this deal is specifically about championships, it certainly encourages ESPN to cover these regular seasons extensively as well.

Meanwhile, there’s an even more obvious win here for ESPN. To start with, the overall bundle looks like quite a good deal for them. And that’s particularly true when it comes to the inclusion of top-end championships like women’s basketball and softball, which could possibly do fine on their own. The overall bundle deal means ESPN is likely getting those below the market rates they’d draw separately.

There are further benefits for ESPN, too. The massive tonnage of games in some of these sports isn’t necessarily a big draw for them, but it does convince at least some fans of particular sports to buy or keep ESPN+. (And that’s made easier still with aggressive bundling strategies that make ESPN+ low-cost when paired with Hulu and Disney+.)

And that fits with a long-established ESPN strategy of airing a ton of content from even less prominent sports. ESPN+ doesn’t necessarily have the top-end live rights of a Peacock or a Prime Video (although they have some there, especially with NFL international game exclusives and with some NFL simulcasts). But they have a deep catalog. And this NCAA deal adds to that.

Overall, the depth of offerings ESPN provides across its platforms helps them stand out amidst the competition. Their ability to air huge numbers of games from even less popular college sports makes them a useful partner for this particular NCAA package. That leads to wins for the NCAA in terms of the amount of coverage for many of these sports. But it also leads to wins for ESPN, and that’s particularly notable around massive ratings like these for the WCWS.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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