In a move to help close the pay gap between men and women in college sports, the NCAA will now pay Division I women's basketball teams who play in March Madness games starting this year.

Beginning with the 2025 NCAA Tournament, women’s college basketball will finally receive financial “units,” just as the men’s teams have for years. Units are multi-million dollar payments the NCAA awards to conferences based on the number of games a given team plays in the March Madness tournament.

Now, so-called performance units, which represent revenue, will be given to women's teams playing in the tournament. A women’s basketball team that reaches the Final Four could bring its conference roughly $1.26 million over the next three years in financial performance rewards.