ESPN apologizes after prematurely broadcasting women’s NCAA tournament bracket

ESPN mistakenly broadcast the bracket for the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in its entirety hours before the field of 64 teams was set to be revealed on the network on Monday.

As an episode of “Bracketology” focused on the men’s tournament aired on ESPNU, sections of the women’s bracket appeared on the side of the screen. Images of the matchups quickly circulated on social media roughly four hours before the bracket was scheduled to be unveiled.

In what can only be described as remarkable, the #NCAAW bracket was just on ESPNU by mistaken. I’ve managed to grab three sections of it if anyone else wants to help fill it out.

Spoiler: UCF & Tennessee are IN pic.twitter.com/xzpKpGpjdT

— Blake DuDonis (@BlakeDuDonis) March 18, 2019

The network acknowledged its mistake in a statement.

{mosads}”We deeply regret the error and extend our apology to the NCAA and the women’s basketball community,” ESPN said. “We will conduct a thorough review of our process to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.”

The network rearranged its programming to announce the bracket on ESPN2 at 5 p.m., followed by the regularly scheduled broadcast of the tournament field on ESPN at 7 p.m. 

The NCAA blamed ESPN for “an unfortunate technical error” and said it would work with the network and other partners to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Official statement on the early reveal of the 2019 NCAA DI Women’s Basketball bracket: #ncaaW pic.twitter.com/kwoQ4Bw0SZ

— NCAA WBB (@ncaawbb) March 18, 2019

The premature unveiling is especially remarkable because it comes roughly three years after the NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket was leaked online in its entirety before it could be announced on television.

While ESPN holds the broadcasting rights to the women’s tournament, CBS and Turner Sports hold the rights to the men’s tournament.