For the first time since 1995, the NCAA women’s basketball tournament will crown a champion on broadcast television.
ABC will carry the Women’s NCAA Tournament National Championship next season, marking the first time since CBS carried the game in 1995 that the national championship has aired on broadcast. The game is scheduled for Sunday, April 2, at 3 PM ET — the earliest start time for the game since that 1995 edition.
ESPN executive Burke Magnus told The Athletic — which was first to report the news — that the intention is for ABC to air the game going forward. ESPN owns rights to the women’s tournament through 2024.
The national championship aired on ESPN in each of the intervening years. The game has in recent years begun at 6 PM ET to accommodate ESPN’s Major League Baseball commitments, though this past season aired fully in primetime at 8 PM due to the MLB lockout.
ABC would usually carry an NBA game on the Sunday of Final Four weekend and last season aired a doubleheader.
As recently as 2019, no Women’s NCAA Tournament games aired on ABC at all. The network carried its first tournament game two years ago (it was originally set to do so the previous year, but the tournament was canceled).
ESPN has steadily expanded its coverage of the women’s tournament. In addition to the growing ABC presence, ESPN began carrying all tournament games nationally in 2021 (a move that was also set to begin the previous year).
ABC already carries the NCAA women’s gymnastics national championship and the FCS college football title game.
(News from ESPN PR)
