LSU women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey on new NCAA TV deal: More ratings, more money

BATON ROUGE – LSU women's basketball and Iowa set a women's basketball record for viewership rating in last April's NCAA championship contest at 9.9 million with a headlining matchup featuring Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark.

Those around the sport had felt the momentum building, and those numbers gave more significance to the ongoing negotiations between the NCAA and prospective television partners for the rights to broadcast women's college basketball and the women's NCAA Tournament.

Hours before Kim Mulkey and LSU took down Missouri, 92-72, inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Thursday, the NCAA announced a new, eight-year deal with ESPN for exclusive rights to cover and broadcast 40 collegiate championships, including $65 million per year value for the women's tournament.

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The new deal also allows for serious discussion regarding revenue distributions for teams that participate in the NCAA tournament, based on how far teams advance. Revenue distribution has been happening on the men's side for a number of years and nailing that down on the women's side is the next big step.

NCAA President Charlie Baker has gone on record a few times and said that the governing body is "committed" to delivering conference and individual teams money from NCAA Tournament performance and he echoed that sentiment Thursday.

Mulkey said that ESPN has been good for women's basketball and she's excited about the new deal.

"It excites me to know they fought for it," Mulkey said. "It meant something to them. I haven't read the release, I just saw the headline. I knew it was up for negotiations. So it's good, let's move on.

"Let's get some more ratings like we did for that national championship last year. The more ratings we can get, the more money you can get."

Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers and Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU/UL athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: LSU's Kim Mulkey reacts to new women's NCAA Tournament TV deal