No decision was made Thursday on whether to expand the fields for the NCAA Division I basketball tournaments as the committees that oversee March Madness wrapped up summer meetings that included discussions about potential expansion plans.
“The still viable outcomes include the tournaments remaining at 68 teams or expanding the fields to either 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2026 or 2027 championships,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said.
With the 2026 tournaments a little more than eight months out, the chance of anything changing next year seem to be waning.
The tournament field has been set at 68 teams since 2011, when the First Four games played on Tuesday and Wednesday were added to the iconic 64-team bracket. The women’s tournament similarly expanded to 68 teams in 2022.
The only thing that appears to be standing in the way of expansion is making the finances work. NCAA officials, led by Gavitt, have been working with television partners CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery to find ways through sponsorship opportunities to generate the revenue necessary to cover the cost of adding more teams and staging more games.
The NCAA’s rights deal with CBS and WBD pays the association more than $1 billion annually and runs through 2032, but the networks are under no obligation to increase the rights fee for a bigger tournament.
The CBS/WBD deal accounts for the vast majority of the NCAA’s annual revenue, most of which is distributed back to member schools through their conferences. Millions of dollars are distributed yearly based on the number of teams a conference places in the men’s tournament and how those teams perform.
A similar performance fund has been established for women’s basketball after the NCAA signed an eight-year, $920 million rights deal with ESPN in 2024 that includes the women’s Division I tournament.
For smaller conferences, NCAA basketball-related distributions are often the biggest source of revenue for their schools.
With schools now permitted to directly pay athletes north of $20 million dollars as part of a landmark lawsuit settlement, the need for revenue at all levels of Division I has never been greater. Expansion is unlikely to provide financial windfall for the NCAA and its schools, but it would have been a non-starter if it didn’t at least pay for itself.
This push to expand has been more about participation, and it started with a recommendation in 2023 by the Division I transformation committee to adjust the fields for all NCAA postseason championships to include at least 25% of schools that participate in a given sport.
As of this past school year, the 68-team basketball tournament field represented 19 percent of the 355 Division I schools. Division I is expected to grow to more than 360 schools over the next year.
While many mid-major conferences hope a bigger tournament field will lead to a few extra bids, the recently expanded power conferences expect to benefit most from the added at-large berths. The SEC set a record last season when 14 of its 16 teams made the men’s bracket.
For the last 15 years, the men’s tournament has started with doubleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday night on the campus of the University of Dayton. The four lowest ranked automatic-qualifying conference champions are matched in two of the games, and the last four teams to receive at-large bids face-off in the other two.
The 68-team field has consisted of 32 automatic qualifiers — one from every Division I conference — and 36 at-large bids chosen by the men’s basketball committee.
Another expansion of the field would be expected to add onto the Tuesday and Wednesday slates with a similar breakdown of automatic qualifying teams from small conferences and at-large selections participating. While the power conferences would prefer to have their teams avoid the play-in round, TV networks want some of those teams playing on those nights to boost viewership.
Expansion would involve building out the opening rounds with an additional site or sites to go with Dayton and help alleviate the travel burden for teams that advance from those games. The basketball committee was presented with various options to consider.
(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
