Interesting article by USA-Today indicates what we all knew---conference revenues even at the P5 level were adversely affected by COVID-19 (some quite a bit more than others).

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic all but halted the Power Five college sports conferences’ seemingly unstoppable revenue growth, new federal tax records show.

After averaging collective annual increases of nearly $252 million over the previous six years, the conferences’ combined revenue rose by less than $11 million in fiscal 2020 and remained just over $2.9 billion. Two of the five saw income declines, and another operated at a modest loss even though its revenue increased.

The conferences other than the Southeastern provided their new returns this week in response to requests from USA TODAY Sports. The SEC made its return public in early February.

The documents provided new information about commissioners’ pre-pandemic pay and their employment statuses. They also revealed fresh insight into the conferences’ total spending on lobbying related to legislation concerning athletes’ ability to make money from their name, image and likeness.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/co...184848001/

From the article:
"The Big Ten reported $768.9 million in revenue, down from 2019 but still about $40 million ahead of the SEC for the top figure."

I was shocked to read that since folks on this board keep claiming the SEC is the top money making conference. Schools in the ACC did a little better with the payouts ranging from $30.3 million to over $37 million. With a full year of the ACCN, unhindered by covid and the yearly increases could very well put the top ACC School payouts at over $40 million.

The only thing that was going to slow the astronomical revenue growth the P5 had been seeing in the past 20 years was legitimately a global pandemic. I anticipate the demand for college football this Fall will be as high, if not higher, than what we saw in 2019 and before. The next round of contracts will be fascinating, especially with more players possibly coming onto the market.

(05-20-2021 02:11 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  From the article:
"The Big Ten reported $768.9 million in revenue, down from 2019 but still about $40 million ahead of the SEC for the top figure."

I was shocked to read that since folks on this board keep claiming the SEC is the top money making conference. Schools in the ACC did a little better with the payouts ranging from $30.3 million to over $37 million. With a full year of the ACCN, unhindered by covid and the yearly increases could very well put the top ACC School payouts at over $40 million.

I'm not sure who is saying that, as the B1G has clearly been the biggest money-earner for many years.

The SEC should be, but it is saddled with the all-in 2008 ESPN deal it signed, which turned out to be a great bargain for ESPN, and which resonates today in the SEC Network. The B1G made the smart move in 2006 when it split it rights, selling half on the market but retaining 1/4 of them via the BTN partnership with FOX.

That's why the B1G earns more, and will continue to earn more, likely well in to the future, as the ESPN deal does not end until the mid-2030s.

The only reason the SEC will stay close to the B1G is because it did smartly retain a separate deal with CBS for its game of the week, another deal that was a huge bargain for the network, but which they will now get a huge bump in pay out of in 2024.

(05-20-2021 01:38 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Interesting article by USA-Today indicates what we all knew---conference revenues even at the P5 level were adversely affected by COVID-19 (some quite a bit more than others).

Thanks for posting.

IIRC, these numbers are for 2019 - 2020, so they capture the disruptions to spring sports in 2020. But if so they would not capture the corona-costs of fall 2020 football or the 2020 - 2021 hoops season.

For fall 2020 football, expect the PAC and B1G to be more adversely affected, because they played fewer games than the SEC, Big 12 and ACC, and all will be affected by not having fans in the stands for football and hoops games.

The SEC has already said it is advancing its schools $23 million each next year out of future media payouts to compensate for projected losses for the entirety of the virus. And they also said this does not represent full compensation, more like half, as the average SEC school has been projected to lose $45 million overall.

There seems to be no question that the P5 took far and away the biggest hit from the virus, as they were the only schools that had something to lose. G5 and lower schools already run on shoestring budgets heavily subsidized with student fees, and those "revenues" remained.

Assuming about $19M in conference administrative expenses, then the back of the envelope comparative financial summary for FY2020 -

BIG: $769M in revenue (down about $10M from prior year); distributing an average of $53.5M (includes MD and Rutgers who were in their final year of ramping up earnings).

SEC: $729M in revenue (FY is different than other conferences); distributing an average of $50.7M.

B12: $409M in revenue (down about $30M from prior year); distributing an average of $39.0M (which excludes T3 payouts...that are material for Texas and Oklahoma).

PAC: $534M in revenue (up $3M from prior year and likely includes an estimated $111M in PACN revenues & expenses); distributing $33.6M per school.

ACC: $497M in revenue (up $40M due to ACCN launch); distributing an average of $33.4M per school (plus ND who got $11M).

The next SEC contract is expected to put them ahead of the Big Ten but that assumes the Big Ten won't get a bump of their own. The SEC was smart to renegotiate before the pandemic and before the NFL contracts were signed. The Big Ten is now negotiating from a position of weakness and if they try to negotiate now they'll be doing so in a year after no Michigan-Ohio State football game and a year the Big Ten embarrassed themselves in the 2021 NCAA men's basketball tournament. If they're going to keep up with the SEC, they'll need a great 2021/22 (on the field and/or in the ratings) and/or they'll need to convince Oklahoma and/or Texas to join. I also wish the Big Ten negotiated while Jim Delany was still commissioner. Now we're asking a relatively new and inexperienced commissioner to negotiate with the media companies.

In addition to ESPN, the SEC right now is suffering from a really bargain SEC on CBS contract (I believe it's $55 million a year?)

Really need to see the ratings of league football/basketball games to see the value of leagues.

(05-21-2021 07:28 AM)schmolik Wrote:  The next SEC contract is expected to put them ahead of the Big Ten but that assumes the Big Ten won't get a bump of their own. The SEC was smart to renegotiate before the pandemic and before the NFL contracts were signed. The Big Ten is now negotiating from a position of weakness and if they try to negotiate now they'll be doing so in a year after no Michigan-Ohio State football game and a year the Big Ten embarrassed themselves in the 2021 NCAA men's basketball tournament.

I think in signing now for the expiring CBS rights, the SEC did what was needed for it. Whether it ends up being the right move we shall see. And that need was driven by the B1G, which has been much smarter than the SEC during the booming rights era.

The SEC faced a looming shortfall compared to the B1G, so it needed to do something NOW to keep the members from getting restless. Signing now for a big bump, a bump that will push them past what the B1G is getting now, does that.

But there is a chance this will backfire, as the history of media rights the past 15+ years is that values go up, not down. There is a chance had the SEC waited two more years to negotiate that they could have gotten more.

The B1G, otoh, strikes me as being in great position. Even with the SEC deal kicking in in 2024, the B1G would be competitive with them even if they got no bump at all for their 2023 rights, which seems extremely unlikely.

The SEC was playing catchup, so was kind of forced to move quickly. The B1G is in the catbird's seat, with much less pressure on it. In all likelihood, when the B1G re-ups in 2023, it will get a nice boost that at least equals the SEC, and probably pushes it past them yet again. But even if not, they will still be raking in a ton of money and won't be far behind.

(05-21-2021 05:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  Assuming about $19M in conference administrative expenses, then the back of the envelope comparative financial summary for FY2020 -

BIG: $769M in revenue (down about $10M from prior year); distributing an average of $53.5M (includes MD and Rutgers who were in their final year of ramping up earnings).

The B1G current members really got the best of Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska. Maryland and Rutgers agreed to join in 2012, joined officially during summer 2014, but as of this moment *still* have not gotten a full share. That starts this summer, summer of 2021, a full seven years after joining. Nebraska got the same type of deal.

In the interim, the current members got the leverage of having them in the conference for purposes of negotiating TV rights, and signed huge deals during that time, the major benefits of which went to the current members. Plus, during these seven-year interims, the B1G has loaned those schools a lot of money over the years to give them a semblance of a full share, and now the current members will begin collecting these loans. This will cut their "full shares" down to a lesser amount. So when you factor that in, and assuming it takes say three years to pay back the loans, that means those schools would have been B1G members for a full decade without receiving full conference shares. Pretty astonishing.

And they are not small sums - the B1G loaned Maryland a whopping $31 million in 2018 alone. Rutgers took a $14 million loan that same year.

The current B1G members are swimming in cash and will continue to do so. Of course, the virus has thrown a wrench in to some of that.

(05-21-2021 08:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-21-2021 05:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  Assuming about $19M in conference administrative expenses, then the back of the envelope comparative financial summary for FY2020 -

BIG: $769M in revenue (down about $10M from prior year); distributing an average of $53.5M (includes MD and Rutgers who were in their final year of ramping up earnings).

The B1G current members really got the best of Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska. Maryland and Rutgers agreed to join in 2012, joined officially during summer 2014, but as of this moment *still* have not gotten a full share. That starts this summer, summer of 2021, a full seven years after joining. Nebraska got the same type of deal.

In the interim, the current members got the leverage of having them in the conference for purposes of negotiating TV rights, and signed huge deals during that time, the major benefits of which went to the current members. Plus, during these seven-year interims, the B1G has loaned those schools a lot of money over the years to give them a semblance of a full share, and now the current members will begin collecting these loans. This will cut their "full shares" down to a lesser amount. So when you factor that in, and assuming it takes say three years to pay back the loans, that means those schools would have been B1G members for a full decade without receiving full conference shares. Pretty astonishing.

And they are not small sums - the B1G loaned Maryland a whopping $31 million in 2018 alone. Rutgers took a $14 million loan that same year.

The current B1G members are swimming in cash and will continue to do so. Of course, the virus has thrown a wrench in to some of that.

Excellent summary and it really affirms, despite the minority belief, that adding both Rutgers and Maryland was a huge financial addition for the B1G. Will Rutgers and Maryland every consistently compete for B1G Football Championships? Probably not. But the market, recruiting territories and peer membership additions have been absolute booms for the B1G. Recent hires (Schiano and Locksley) also appear to be solid football hires for the near-and-long term.

Nebraska, on the other hand, needs to get its act together.

(05-21-2021 08:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-21-2021 05:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  Assuming about $19M in conference administrative expenses, then the back of the envelope comparative financial summary for FY2020 -

BIG: $769M in revenue (down about $10M from prior year); distributing an average of $53.5M (includes MD and Rutgers who were in their final year of ramping up earnings).

The B1G current members really got the best of Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska. Maryland and Rutgers agreed to join in 2012, joined officially during summer 2014, but as of this moment *still* have not gotten a full share. That starts this summer, summer of 2021, a full seven years after joining. Nebraska got the same type of deal.

In the interim, the current members got the leverage of having them in the conference for purposes of negotiating TV rights, and signed huge deals during that time, the major benefits of which went to the current members. Plus, during these seven-year interims, the B1G has loaned those schools a lot of money over the years to give them a semblance of a full share, and now the current members will begin collecting these loans. This will cut their "full shares" down to a lesser amount. So when you factor that in, and assuming it takes say three years to pay back the loans, that means those schools would have been B1G members for a full decade without receiving full conference shares. Pretty astonishing.

And they are not small sums - the B1G loaned Maryland a whopping $31 million in 2018 alone. Rutgers took a $14 million loan that same year.

The current B1G members are swimming in cash and will continue to do so. Of course, the virus has thrown a wrench in to some of that.

IMO, the financial management of BIG activities was outstanding under Delaney. From the risk taking with the BTN, to splitting media rights and having shorter contract lengths...the BIG has been prescient (or they’ve been smart enough to copy the NFL). The buy-in requirements for Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers are classic hazing / indoctrination techniques. It takes up to a decade for the athletic programs to be full financial members.

(05-21-2021 07:28 AM)schmolik Wrote:  The next SEC contract is expected to put them ahead of the Big Ten but that assumes the Big Ten won't get a bump of their own. The SEC was smart to renegotiate before the pandemic and before the NFL contracts were signed. The Big Ten is now negotiating from a position of weakness and if they try to negotiate now they'll be doing so in a year after no Michigan-Ohio State football game and a year the Big Ten embarrassed themselves in the 2021 NCAA men's basketball tournament. If they're going to keep up with the SEC, they'll need a great 2021/22 (on the field and/or in the ratings) and/or they'll need to convince Oklahoma and/or Texas to join. I also wish the Big Ten negotiated while Jim Delany was still commissioner. Now we're asking a relatively new and inexperienced commissioner to negotiate with the media companies.

In addition to ESPN, the SEC right now is suffering from a really bargain SEC on CBS contract (I believe it's $55 million a year?)

Wow - I don't understand the pessimism. I pretty much disagree with everything here. The Big Ten is negotiating from a complete position of strength. Ohio State has turned itself into the most consistent TV draw in college football other than Alabama (whereas it was schools like Notre Dame and USC in the past) and the league generally had the highest regular season ratings for college basketball this past season (and that's pretty typical every season notwithstanding Duke-UNC). Any CFP and NCAA Tournament performance is completely irrelevant - the Big Ten offers the best combo of football and basketball ratings year-over-year and that has been the case for a long time. Plus, networks are paying huge premiums for sports (not just the NFL - look at the new NHL and MLB deals) and streaming companies are pushing the prices up. Having a contract negotiation come up next year (and basically doing it when it's the only real major sports property on the market) is the *perfect* time for the Big Ten.

The reason why the contract is coming up now while Delany isn't commissioner is that he specifically planned it this way - he did NOT want a 10 to 15-year contract like the other leagues because he believed that it was a good bet that the market would go even higher again in the early-2020s and I think that bet is going to pay off greatly.

(05-20-2021 02:11 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  From the article:
"The Big Ten reported $768.9 million in revenue, down from 2019 but still about $40 million ahead of the SEC for the top figure."

I was shocked to read that since folks on this board keep claiming the SEC is the top money making conference. Schools in the ACC did a little better with the payouts ranging from $30.3 million to over $37 million. With a full year of the ACCN, unhindered by covid and the yearly increases could very well put the top ACC School payouts at over $40 million.

I agree. And for 2020 the ACC had ND in the fold, sent two teams to the playoffs, and better managed the pandemic.

(05-21-2021 09:44 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  

(05-21-2021 08:25 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-21-2021 05:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  Assuming about $19M in conference administrative expenses, then the back of the envelope comparative financial summary for FY2020 -

BIG: $769M in revenue (down about $10M from prior year); distributing an average of $53.5M (includes MD and Rutgers who were in their final year of ramping up earnings).

The B1G current members really got the best of Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska. Maryland and Rutgers agreed to join in 2012, joined officially during summer 2014, but as of this moment *still* have not gotten a full share. That starts this summer, summer of 2021, a full seven years after joining. Nebraska got the same type of deal.

In the interim, the current members got the leverage of having them in the conference for purposes of negotiating TV rights, and signed huge deals during that time, the major benefits of which went to the current members. Plus, during these seven-year interims, the B1G has loaned those schools a lot of money over the years to give them a semblance of a full share, and now the current members will begin collecting these loans. This will cut their "full shares" down to a lesser amount. So when you factor that in, and assuming it takes say three years to pay back the loans, that means those schools would have been B1G members for a full decade without receiving full conference shares. Pretty astonishing.

And they are not small sums - the B1G loaned Maryland a whopping $31 million in 2018 alone. Rutgers took a $14 million loan that same year.

The current B1G members are swimming in cash and will continue to do so. Of course, the virus has thrown a wrench in to some of that.

IMO, the financial management of BIG activities was outstanding under Delaney. From the risk taking with the BTN, to splitting media rights and having shorter contract lengths...the BIG has been prescient (or they’ve been smart enough to copy the NFL). The buy-in requirements for Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers are classic hazing / indoctrination techniques. It takes up to a decade for the athletic programs to be full financial members.

Yes, no question, over the past 15 years, the years when money for college athletics media boomed dramatically, Delaney was clearly the MVP of the P5 conference commissioners. His leadership advantage is why the B1G is currently collecting about $10m more per school than the SEC, and has an even larger gap on everyone else.

He really did an outstanding job with expansion and with media rights, the two Big Elephant issues for conferences over that time.

Looks like 2020-2021 is going to be even worse.

“The Big 12 Conference is distributing about $345 million of revenue to its 10 schools, the second year in a row that figure has been lower because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each school will get about $34.5 million for the 2020-21 fiscal year, down from $37.7 million announced at this time last year...”

https://news.yahoo.com/big-12-revenue-lo...14454.html

(05-20-2021 01:38 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Interesting article by USA-Today indicates what we all knew---conference revenues even at the P5 level were adversely affected by COVID-19 (some quite a bit more than others).

I think it's clear that the virus hurt P5 schools by far the worst. That's because they had the most revenue to lose. The SEC announced last week it is advancing each member $24 million this year to help make up for virus losses, money that will be deducted from future media deal revenue. That's a big hit.

Perversely and paradoxically, the virus showed the strength of a funding model dependent on soaking one's students and the "academic side", the funding model used by everyone outside the P5. Since this funding isn't dependent on actually playing any games, just enrollment, it proved durable when enrollment didn't plunge at most places nearly as much as expected. I don't know of any schools that suspended their athletic fees and transfers just because games stopped being played, LOL.

In contrast, P5 make a lot of money from what we might call "variable" revenue, revenue that depends on games actually being played, like media money, ticket sales, parking, seat licenses. We never thought of these streams as contingent and variable before, they seemed rock-solid, because "not playing games" seemed to be something that would never occur. But the virus exposed it. Schools like LSU and Ohio State make many tens of millions off of that stuff, but when games came to a halt, or were resumed with no fans in the stands, that money was drastically reduced.

G5 and lower don't make much off of that to begin with, so had far less to lose.

(05-20-2021 01:38 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Interesting article by USA-Today indicates what we all knew---conference revenues even at the P5 level were adversely affected by COVID-19 (some quite a bit more than others).

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic all but halted the Power Five college sports conferences’ seemingly unstoppable revenue growth, new federal tax records show.

After averaging collective annual increases of nearly $252 million over the previous six years, the conferences’ combined revenue rose by less than $11 million in fiscal 2020 and remained just over $2.9 billion. Two of the five saw income declines, and another operated at a modest loss even though its revenue increased.

The conferences other than the Southeastern provided their new returns this week in response to requests from USA TODAY Sports. The SEC made its return public in early February.

The documents provided new information about commissioners’ pre-pandemic pay and their employment statuses. They also revealed fresh insight into the conferences’ total spending on lobbying related to legislation concerning athletes’ ability to make money from their name, image and likeness.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/co...184848001/

yeah I don't feel sorry for them

How did the G5 and FCS survive through all of this?

(05-28-2021 08:06 AM)GreenBison Wrote:  

(05-20-2021 01:38 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Interesting article by USA-Today indicates what we all knew---conference revenues even at the P5 level were adversely affected by COVID-19 (some quite a bit more than others).

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic all but halted the Power Five college sports conferences’ seemingly unstoppable revenue growth, new federal tax records show.

After averaging collective annual increases of nearly $252 million over the previous six years, the conferences’ combined revenue rose by less than $11 million in fiscal 2020 and remained just over $2.9 billion. Two of the five saw income declines, and another operated at a modest loss even though its revenue increased.

The conferences other than the Southeastern provided their new returns this week in response to requests from USA TODAY Sports. The SEC made its return public in early February.

The documents provided new information about commissioners’ pre-pandemic pay and their employment statuses. They also revealed fresh insight into the conferences’ total spending on lobbying related to legislation concerning athletes’ ability to make money from their name, image and likeness.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/co...184848001/

yeah I don't feel sorry for them

How did the G5 and FCS survive through all of this?

As I mentioned, you can't lose a lot *more* money when you are already losing a lot of money, as G5 and FCS are.

G5 and FCS rely for a lot of their funding on student fees and transfers, and those don't come to a stop when games are canceled. When you are already running at a big operating loss, you are, kind of perversely, less vulnerable to the losses from your meagre revenue streams.

In contrast, when the B1G cancels games, then that's huge media money lost and big revenue from the 70,000 or so who normally come to the games.

And let's face it - poor programs are by necessity more efficient. I saw a brief interview with a rep from a small FCS school last year and he was asked how they were going to operate on a shoestring budget during the virus. He said that they always run their program on shoestrings and bailing wire, so that won't be anything new.

At LSU and Ohio State, they aren't used to that. They are used to spending lavishly on things whose costs - like for facilities and coaches and staff - that didn't go away when the virus canceled games and revenue.