re: "Nobody Watches Women's Basketball", They Said! LSU Lady Tigers

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On Tuesday, ESPN announced that the eight Sweet 16 games on Friday and Saturday averaged a record 1.2 million viewers. The round was led by Ohio State’s win over UConn on ABC Saturday afternoon, which averaged a record 2.414 million viewers.

South Carolina’s win over UCLA on ESPN Saturday afternoon averaged 1.753 million viewers, the second most-watched Sweet 16 game on record. Three other games in the round topped a million viewers: Colorado-Iowa on ESPN Friday night (1.288 million, head to head with Miami-Houston in the men’s tournament), Notre Dame-Maryland on ESPN Saturday afternoon (1.231 million), and LSU-Utah on ESPN Friday night (1.099 million).

The Elite Eight also drew record viewership for ESPN.

Three of the four games topped two million viewers. LSU-Miami on Sunday was the low game on the slate, averaging 1.894 million viewers on ESPN. Iowa-Louisville, which started at 9:20 PM on ESPN Sunday night, averaged a tournament-high 2.499 million viewers, which was a record for the round. On Monday, South Carolina-Maryland averaged 2.167 million viewers on ESPN, followed by 2.233 million for Virginia Tech-Ohio State. That’s an average of 2.198 million viewers for the round, the most-watched Elite Eight on record.

Following these viewership numbers, the cries for the NCAA to unbundle the Women’s Tournament and sell its rights separately will only grow louder.

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https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/ncaa-womens-tournament-sweet-16-elite-eight-draw-record-audiences-on-espn-platforms.html

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With all of that being said, I'd bet the women's basketball program is still going to lose millions of dollars this year. For comparison, last year ticket sales grew by $842,526 and contributions grew by $551,336. The program still lost $6.55 million

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I don't know if Coach Mulkey and her staff are worth the money they are paid. As the original post pointed out there are other things to consider besides profit and loss. Things such as good will for the University, publicity, etc.
But this poster is correct that women's basketball lost money last year and will continue to lose money. This was in large part due to the $5.1 million spent on Mulkey and her staff.
Only three sports made a profit in 2022. Football was king of course with 6.53 million profit. Men's basketball was next with 1.67million profit and baseball was way behind with $84,595.00. All other sports suffered losses and were supported by Football.