Some Big Ten schools to get $50 million payouts from latest deals

By Ross Kelly June 25, 2018 at 8:33am

The Big Ten may have been left out of the College Football Playoff, but the bottom line is the conference made its mark where it really matters — with the bottom line.

The fiscal year for NCAA universities comes to an end next week but early numbers are out on the expected revenue for schools in the Big Ten.

The Detroit News reports that Michigan will receive $51.1 million in disbursements from the Big Ten Conference.

Every school doesn’t receive exactly the same from the conference, but that is a ballpark figure and some Big Ten schools may even receive a bit more.

Big Ten distribution $52 million pic.twitter.com/AcVMOiVJPk

— angelique (@chengelis) June 21, 2018

The per-school revenue for the other Power 5 conferences hasn’t been publicly released yet, but we do have an idea of how the Big Ten stacks up with the AAC as a whole.

The AAC just recorded a revenue of $75 million.

Each Big Ten team got $51 million for the past year.

— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) June 21, 2018

Power 5 conference per-school distributions for FY17:
–SEC: $42.M to $39.9M
–Big Ten: $37.2M to $37M
–Big 12: Roughly $34.3M per school except Baylor
–Pac-12: $30.9M per school
–ACC: $30.7M to $25.3M except Notre Dame

— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) May 25, 2018

Big Ten schools received $37 million last year so this comes out to a nearly 38 percent increase in revenue for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

In light of these numbers, should the NCAA allow schools to give money to players?

A big reason for this jump in revenue is because of the new TV deals that the conference signed with ESPN and Fox in 2017.

The SEC signed its current TV deals with ESPN and CBS in 2008, and as we’ve seen in pro sports, the newer the contract, the more you make. Thus, the Big Ten’s revenue from its TV deals surpasses even the mighty SEC’s TV deals.

The Big Ten also benefits from owning 49 percent of its own network, the Big Ten Network. By comparison, the SEC doesn’t own the SEC Network, which is a joint venture by ESPN and Hearst.

Yet, despite all of this money headed the way of Big Ten schools, some people, like Dick Vitale, can’t get over the fact that the athletes will see none of it.

Wow ⁦⁦@B1GMBBall⁩ ⁦@B1Gfootball⁩ what a payday per school 51 MILLION / How much did the players who make it possible get ? Like zilch / sad / come on ⁦@NCAA⁩ take care of the kids! https://t.co/mLppUTv73r

— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) June 24, 2018

While the $51 million per school is a huge chunk of money, it’s also interesting to note that in the case of Michigan, its Big Ten payout doesn’t account for their largest source of revenue.

The conference payout amounts to about 27 percent of Michigan’s annual athletic budget. Ticket sales and seat licenses account for nearly 42 percent of their revenue and other schools are likely on par with those numbers.

Despite the tens of millions each school receives from the conference, school athletic programs are not all swimming in cash. According to an NJ Advance Media analysis cited by NJ.com, six of the 13 Big Ten schools whose athletics reports are publicly available lost money during the 2016-17 school year.

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