A tipping point for women's hoops? NCAA well-timed on taking media rights to market; What does NBA/NBPA deal mean? UFC/WWE combine to offer combat sports force
What a week. We have the NCAA Men's final on Monday, The Masters week, and remember the CAA World Congress of Sports in Los Angeles, April 18th and 19th. And good morning, this is your morning buzz cast for Monday April 3rd. I'm Abe Madkour, hope everybody is doing well. On ESPN.com this morning around 5:00 AM the first four stories of the right side news rail were all about one topic and one sport. No, it wasn't the Masters, it wasn't about tonight's Men's basketball championship. Uh, it wasn't about Major League Baseball's first weekend of play. The four stories all covered the NCAA Women's National Championship game. The story was also on the front page of the New York Times and led this morning's morning shows. That shows to me the historic nature of this weekend.
You know, yesterday I had friends making plans around watching the Women's Final with groups. I was on multiple text chains during the game. The restaurant I was at Sunday afternoon had its normally quiet bar filled with couples watching the Women's Final. It just felt like this was a tipping point and LSU emerged as the champion, but easily it was the game of women's basketball that won the weekend. The final I thought was extraordinarily well played. The shooting was unbelievable and the emotion and the drama was real. You had some smack talking. You had surprise heroes. You also had Caitlin Clark, who really was the talk of the tournament for her exciting play and really one of the most impressive individual performances I ever recall seeing in a tournament. You saw the interest, the numbers on Friday night, Iowa's upset of South Carolina, delivered the best women's semi-final viewership on record with 5.5 million viewers. That game drew a better audience than the last 17 women's national title games, and it was the third best women's college hoops game ever behind only two title games that Yukon played in 2002 and 2004.
So the Women's Doubleheader on Friday average 4.5 million viewers, which was up 66% from the previous year. The question I have is just how big the final number on Sunday will come in at. Could that audience hit nearly 10 million viewers? If so, that would be a very healthy number and a great indicator to the interest in women's sports. And how good is the NCAA's timing? We've talked about how the NCAA is entering the final season of its media rights deal with ESPN to broadcast all division one championships. Remember, they're bundled in except for football and men's basketball. NCAA President Charlie Baker acknowledged that the timing to go to market is perfect and it will come after such a successful women's tournament. He said he is interested to see what the marketplace will think the women's tournament is worth, and it certainly sounds like he is interested in carving it out and selling the women's basketball rights separately. So we'll have to see how all that unfolds. But just a great, great month capped off by an unbelievable weekend for women's basketball. And another clear sign of the growth in women's sports.
One other positive sign. Yes, we saw the strong attendance during the women's tournament and the scenes from Dallas were really, really quite compelling. But there was also a good story of attendance during the regular season. SBJ's Michael Smith reported that four schools registered home attendance of 10,000 fans or more for their women's basketball program. The last time four schools or more average 10,000 fans was in 2006 and 2007, of course, South Carolina led the nation in average home regular season attendance with almost 13,000 fans a game. They were followed by Iowa, Iowa State and Yukon. But again, other clear indicators that were seeing some very, very positive energy in women's sports. So I know this sounds odd, but let's not forget the men as Yukon and San Diego State will meet tonight Monday for the Men's National Championship game. I'm gonna go to my producer, Reggie Walker to get his pick for tonight. Reggie, who do you like?
I'm gonna stick with my pick from beginning of the final four and ride it out with San Diego State. Most people seem to be leaning Yukon. I'm gonna stick with San Diego State. Brian Dutcher finds a way.
There you go. You hear it there from Reggie Walker. It's the first time a team from the Mountain West is in the national title game. No, we do not have the blue bloods that are generally in the mix around the NCAA men's finals and we will see if that impacts viewership tonight.
Speaking of tonight, one of the best things I saw all weekend was a fantastic video tribute to Jim Nantz on Saturday during the Final Four pregame show on CBS. If you haven't seen it, please make a point to it's roughly three minutes. It's a video narrated by Ron Howard and it highlights Nantz's 32 seasons of calling the NCAA tournament. After the video, Nance gave just a very real emotional response and it just reaffirmed why Nance is so good and so well liked and so enjoy Jim Nantz's final NCAA call tonight. Ian Eagle will take over for Jim Nance next year. Jim Nance, quite a run with the NCAA. My only quibble about tonight. I can't believe we have to wait till 920 ET for TIPOFF on CBS.
Let's move on from college sports. We hinted at it last week and kudos to the NBA and the NBPA for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement that will ensure labor peace avoid any labor standoff. A new CBA will begin next season. It will last for seven years. There is a mutual opt out clause after six years. Any new CBA is a cause of celebration and this is very noteworthy. And while more details will be coming out over the next few weeks, here is what we do know. There will be an in-season tournament with monetary rewards for players and coaches who win it. The tournament could start as soon as next season. The league and the Players Association tried to address load management by making a 65 game minimum for player eligibility for most post-season awards. The two sides also looked to slow the spending of some of its higher revenue teams by implementing a second luxury tax tier.
Again, with the goal of trying to slow some spending on player contracts, they did not change the age limit for entering the NBA draft. So the age limit was left at 19 years old. So there'll be more details, but kudos to the NBA and the NBPA. The NBA is in a good spot. There was no major issues that would've led or should have led to major labor strife. The relationship between the league and the players association is much stronger. I remember in the old days, uh, David Stern and Billy Hunter really were not very amicable during their negotiations. The tone is much different. Today the league continues to bring in more and more revenue, and now with Labor peace, the league can focus on their next media rights deal, which everybody is watching and talking about and expect to be a very big deal.
And let's end with another big deal at leak Sunday night. On the last night of WrestleMania in Los Angeles, CNBC was first to report that endeavor will acquire the WWE, which would see the UFC and the WWE form, a new publicly traded company. As part of this deal, endeavor will own 51% of the new combat sports and entertainment company while WWE shareholders would get 49%. The Endeavor deal gives WWE an enterprise value of $9.3 billion and the UFC an enterprise value of $12.1 billion. Just think about those. Those are some serious valuations in terms of structure and makeup. Endeavor's Ari Emanuel will be the CEO of both Endeavor and the new company, Vince McMahon will be executive chairman while Endeavor President Mark Shapiro will be president of both Endeavor and the new company. Dana White, will remain as President of the UFC while Nick Kahn will serve as president of the WWE and the wrestling business. So the bottom line is this could be and should be a very powerful sports and entertainment combination, especially when it comes to events, sponsorship, and media rights. But just think of that boardroom. Boy, you have some very, very strong personalities in the boardroom and this will be one deal to watch.
So that is your morning buzz cast for Monday, April 3rd. Wow, what a start to the week. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzz Cast. Thanks for spreading the word on the buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. Have a great day. I'll speak to you tomorrow.