Arizona women's basketball players could see $1M payday from university

Texas Tech disclosed it will allot about 2% of its revenue-share dollars to women’s basketball this season, but most schools haven’t publicly said what share of the pie they’ll give.

Arizona coach Becky Burke says she isn’t sure the private conversations about it matter, either. Maybe her women's basketball coaching competitors receive even more of the $20.5 million max that power-conference schools will share, maybe not.

“It's so early on with rev-share and you don't know when you hear things, what's factual and what's not,” Burke said. “We only know what we can control and what we have under our roof, and that's what I'm worried about.”

Like most school officials concerned about the effects on recruiting and player retention that open revenue-share discussions might bring, Arizona Athletic Director Desireé Reed-Francois has declined to release the school’s revenue-sharing percentages. Also, the Star’s public-records request for the UA athletic department’s proposed budget for 2025-26, which might contain revenue-sharing details, has not been fulfilled since its April 2025 request.

But NIL advisory firm Opendorse, citing anonymized NIL payments, disclosures and budgets from athletic departments through late June, estimated that power conferences are actually paying an average of 6.6% of their revenue share budgets to women’s basketball.

That translates to a collective $1.35 million for 2025-26. If Arizona gave its women’s basketball players that amount — and because Opendorse also estimates starters receive on average 80% of a position group’s total — here’s how the UA women’s basketball team’s salary structure could look:

(NOTES: The first figure after each position is a total for the entire position group, including all starters and reserves, based on Opendorse industry averages. All specific player estimates are based solely on Opendorse’s reported industry averages, and were not received from UA sources; UA is not releasing player compensation information.)

Guards: $419,430 (31.0% of women’s basketball total). Most likely, because the Wildcats have an extremely guard-heavy roster, UA is likely to have allotted a much higher percentage to this position group than Opendorse’s estimated average.

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Projected starters Noelani Cornfield, Sumayah Sugapong and Mickayla Perdue were all recruited out of the transfer portal with considerable leverage of being mid-major stars, so they likely could command comfortably into the six figures.

Forwards: $221,892 (16.4%). Transfer forwards such as Tanyuel Welch (Memphis) and Fredriecka Wallace (Kansas) could be among the Wildcats’ higher earners here, along with returning but injured forward Montaya Dew and New Orleans transfer Nora Francois.

Centers: $711,678 (52.6%). Former longtime UA coach Joan Bonvicini likes to say guards can keep you in every game, but post players “win championships” in the women’s game. That philosophy appears to be baked into the much higher average rev-share totals given to women’s basketball centers.

But Arizona is a different case, since it is not expecting major production from its centers, so its rev-share number in the post could be much less than the industry average.

The Wildcats are turning to 6-7 center Achol Magot inside but aren’t expecting her to log major minutes, and could go small on many occasions. UA is also expected to play 6-3 sophomore transfer Blessing Adebanjo inside.