A women’s basketball team that reaches the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament could earn its league approximately $1.26 million in financial performance bonuses over the next three years.

In an email obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, the NCAA sent to its basketball committees and conference commissioners outlined a salary structure for the proposal that awards performance units to teams playing in March Madness. The units represent revenue.

The proposal now only needs to be approved by NCAA members in a vote on January 15. The Division I Board of Directors unanimously approved the proposal earlier this month.

In the first year of the fund, teams will be awarded $15 million, representing 26% of women’s basketball media revenue. By 2028, that amount will increase to $25 million, representing 41% of revenue. The 26% matches the amount men’s basketball teams received in the first year of the implementation of the Performance Units program.

The lack of a units system for the women’s tournament was the subject of sharp criticism.

The March Madness proposal for women is similar to the unified program for men’s basketball. Each of the 32 conferences that receive automatic admission to the tournament will receive one unified, and additional unified will be awarded to teams that receive at-large admission.

The longer a school participates in a tournament, the more units the school conference receives. Conferences decide how to distribute the revenue from the units to each of their members. Each unit was worth about $2 million for the 2023 men’s tournament.

The men’s basketball teams will now receive 24 percent of the media rights, which amounts to $8.8 billion over eight years starting this year. Women’s basketball is worth $65 million per tournament in the NCAA’s new media rights deal with ESPN – about 10 times more than in the contract that ends this year.

To increase the value of each unit of performance, women receive a higher share of media revenues.

The NCAA’s sharing of March Madness revenue with its member schools has long been a feature of the men’s tournament. The 2018 tournament, for example, brought in $844.3 million in television and marketing rights, most of it from a deal with CBS and Turner Sports to broadcast the games.

The majority of the money flows through the NCAA to the conferences and then back to the member schools, more than 300 of which have Division I basketball teams that qualify for the tournament. Schools invest most of their money in sports, from scholarships for athletes in all sports to coaches’ salaries, training facilities, stadiums, ballparks and arenas.

The women’s tournament is coming off its most successful year yet, with a record audience of 18.7 million viewers for South Carolina’s title game victory over Iowa, the highest viewership of any basketball broadcast in the last five years. The men’s final – UConn winning its second straight title by beating Purdue – was surpassed by nearly 3 million viewers. The women’s tournament also saw record attendance.