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A Closer Look at Oklahoma State’s $36.5 Million In Big 12 Revenue

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I’m just going to come out and say it: Conference revenue reporting is complex and frustrating and difficult to write about. I’ve been dreading diving into this post because I feel as if I always get something wrong when I’m going deep on the billions various conferences bring in and dish out to their schools.

With that qualifier in place, let’s tread into the deep end and take a look at where the Big 12’s recent $36.5 million payout to each school in its conference stands as it relates to the other four Power 5 conferences.

These numbers were cobbled together using a variety of #sources. The other four conferences have not reported for FY 2018, and the Big Ten hasn’t even (officially) reported for FY 2017.

SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 numbers for 2015, 2016 — Here
SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 numbers for 2017 — Here
Pac-12 number for 2017 — Here
Big 12 number for 2018 — Here
ACC numbers for 2015, 2016 — Here
ACC numbers for 2017 — Here

Conference FY 2015 FY 2016 FY 2017 FY 2018
SEC $32.7M $40.4M $41M
Big 10 $32.4M $34.8M $38.5M (reported)
ACC $26.2M $23.8M $26.6M
Big 12 $23.4M $28.5M $34.3M  $36.5M
Pac 12 $25.1M $28.7M $30.9M

I’m always fascinated when I see these numbers with my eyes and then hear about the death of the Big 12 with my ears. Is the Big 12 perfect? No. Does it have a lot of issues? Yes. Could it have been handled more poorly from a marketing and public perception standpoint over the last decade? Unequivocally no.

But power and structure are generally governed by money, and even though the Big Ten is about to watch everything around it burn to the ground, the Big 12 is — dare I say it — as stable as it has ever been.

As always, it’s important to point out the third-tier rights issue, too. Third-tier rights are essentially everything that’s on the Longhorn Network. All the stuff that ESPN or Fox haven’t bought. For Oklahoma State this includes baseball, women’s basketball, some men’s basketball and a football game.

They are allowed to go and sell these “products” independent of what anyone else in the conference does (which OSU does to Fox Sports and Learfield for distribution). Texas sold their stash for $15 million a year to ESPN. OSU doesn’t get that much, but you can add to the $36.5 million total when you factor that in.

Based on some #fuzzymath, the Cowboys earned $39.8 million on media rights ($36.4M) plus NCAA ($2.9M) and Big 12 ($415K) distributions in 2017 (see here) — if $34.3 million of that was from the Big 12 (see chart at the top) then I think we can presume they get between $2-6 million from third-tier stuff (again, a lot of this is difficult to decipher and buried within financial statements). Regardless, OSU is dragging in close to $40 million for the digital distribution of its athletic #content. Quite a world we live in.

The other four conferences have their third-tier rights folded in to their numbers, which is great for the SEC and sounds like a mess for the ACC. What it does is make the Big 12 look even stronger when you look at each individual team as well as give it some wiggle room in the future.

A question: In the cord-cutting world in which we live, would you rather ESPN control the distribution of your content over the next 10 years, or would you rather control it yourself? Five years ago that was a no-brainer ESPN answer. Now? I’m not so sure.

“We’re very competitive and we’re 10 teams,” West Virginia President E. Gordon Gee, the chairman of the Big 12 board of directors, told the Dallas Morning News recently. “I think the advantage of the Big 12 is we’re only 10 teams. We’re agile. Sometimes it’s difficult to get 14 teams or 12 teams or people with different views.”

I should also note that the Big 12 title game was a $3 million-per-team success so that, uh, ain’t going away any time soon.

The financial increase came despite the Big 12 not having Sugar Bowl revenue because of the College Football Playoff rotation, which usually contributes about $40 million annually to the conference. Revenue from the return of the Big 12 championship generated $30 million and helped offset the shortfall, Bowlsby said. Next year with the return of the Sugar Bowl revenue, Big 12 distributions per school could reach a milestone of $40 million, Bowlsby acknowledged. [DMN]

The ACC and Pac-12 will not touch that $40 million number (even with third-tier rights!)

So yeah, the numbers are complicated, and I’m not sure if they tell us much on a granular level. But the bigger picture is that the Big 12 is raking in money at a rate that isn’t quite as high as the SEC and Big Ten but is certainly outpacing the ACC and Pac-12.

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