NCAA Revenue Sharing & NIL Collectives – Pac-12 Schools

Estimated NCAA Revenue Sharing 2025-26: Pac-12 Schools

NCAA Revenue Sharing
Estimates 2025-26 *
Annual
Revenue
22% of
Revenue
2025 Cap
Oregon State 62,557,861 13,762,729 13,762,729
Washington State 59,390,920 13,066,002 13,066,002
Average per School ** $ 60,974,391 $ 13,414,366 $ 13,414,366

* These are estimates of the maximum amount of Revenue sharing per school allowed under the proposed NCAA revenue sharing model scheduled to become effective for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Participation is optional, schools can elect not to share revenues with athletes or share revenues at an amount less than 22%. The annual cap of $ 21 million is the current estimate for the 2025-26 fiscal year. This cap is scheduled to increase to $ 33 million annually per school over the next ten years based on the proposed revenue sharing model. Revenue sharing is in addition to any NIL compensation and athletic scholarships received by athletes.

** Ten Pac-12 schools left the conference after the 2023-24 fiscal year due to issues in negotiating a new TV contract, and revenue for the two remaining Pac-12 schools includes income from the now expired TV contract. Oregon State and Washington State have stated their intention is to rebuild the Pac-12 conference and in September 2024, the Pac-12 officially admitted Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State as members schools beginning with the 2026-27 academic year.

Computed Athletic Department revenue includes event tickets and admission fees, game guarantees, TV, media, licensing, advertising, sponsorships and royalty rights, bowl game, NCAA and conference distributions and all related revenues. Revenue does not include direct or indirect school support, student fees or unrecompensed (i.e. charitable) contributions to the athletic department from alumni and boosters. See our Methodology page for a summary of our data sources and procedures.

Estimated NIL Collective Funding 2024-25: Pac-12 Schools

Pac-12 Conference 2023-24
Member Schools - 202312
Member Schools - 20242
Average Collective Funding per School 2023-24 *$ 6,472,447
Average Collective Funding per School 2024-25 * $ 3,190,207

Pac-12 Conference Schools 2023-24:

School2023
Conf
2024
Conf
Collective
Funding *
Total
Support
Ticket
Sales
Contributions
ArizonaPac-12Big 12 $ 6,414,683 39,030,243 19,164,426 19,865,817
Arizona State Pac-12Big 12 $ 5,689,877 34,620,152 14,144,182 20,475,970
CaliforniaPac-12ACC $ 3,932,903 23,929,814 8,073,384 15,856,430
Colorado Pac-12Big 12 $ 5,337,719 32,477,439 19,175,198 13,302,241
Oregon **Pac-12Big Ten $ 10,623,807 64,640,729 24,357,945 40,282,784
Oregon State Pac-12Pac-12 $ 3,163,423 19,247,899 9,447,886 9,800,013
Southern Cal **Pac-12Big Tenn/an/an/an/a
Stanford Pac-12ACCn/an/an/an/a
UCLA **Pac-12Big Ten $ 5,919,423 36,016,831 17,494,361 18,522,470
UtahPac-12Big 12 $ 7,252,969 44,130,809 15,286,819 28,843,990
Washington **Pac-12Big Ten $ 9,406,794 57,235,798 29,198,790 28,037,008
Washington State Pac-12Pac-12 $ 3,216,991 19,573,838 9,299,636 10,274,202

* See our disclosure of Methodology as to how these estimates were arrived at.

** Big Ten Blues? Why the Four Pac-12 schools joining the Big Ten this year may soon regret their decision.

Listing of Pac-12 NIL Collectives  by School:

SchoolCollective(s)
Oregon State Dam Nation Collective
Washington State Cougar Collective

Why a rebuilt Pac-12 should remain a Power 5 Conference:

In 2024 ten current members of the Pac-12 will leave and join new conferences. The reason for the departures is to secure football TV contracts. The two remaining Pac-12 schools will be Oregon State and Washington State who intend to rebuild the conference.

Many people are already saying that the “Power 5” is now the “Power 4”, but as ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso is fond of saying … not so fast my Friend. Currently the most likely scenario is for the Pac-12 to be rebuilt with some form of reverse merger with the Mountain West Conference. If so, should this be considered a Power 5 conference?

Just by athletic competitiveness the answer is a pretty clear yes. This past football season, six of the Pac-2/MW schools had teams either ranked or receiving votes in the top 25 polls. In basketball, it was San Diego State playing UConn in the 2023 Men’s championship game, not any school from the other power conferences. In baseball, Oregon State has won three national championships in the past 17 years, more than any other NCAA school. I could go on, but you get the point.

A merged Pac-12 / Mountain West Conference would have some impressive and unique characteristics that would be very attractive to broadcasters:

  • Schools in 9 western states (10 if you include Hawaii) – the current Pac-12 has schools in only 6 states.
  • Fast growing media markets including San Diego, San Jose, Las Vegas, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Boise, Salt Lake City, Spokane and central California among others.
  • The average in-state undergraduate percentage of these schools is 77% – significantly higher than the departing Pac-12 schools. This indicates that school alumni are more likely to reside in the target media markets compared to schools with a higher percentage of out-of-state enrollment.
  • With departure of the other Pac-12 schools to conferences based in central and eastern time zones, the supply of Power 5 match-ups for the Pacific time zone late (7pm & 8pm) games will be decreased. The rebuilt Pac-12 would be able to effectively fill this upcoming shortage in available games for  broadcast.

The effect of the ten departing Pac-12 schools moving to conferences based 2 to 3 hours east is significant, as games involving west coast versus mid-west and east coast teams are going to be compacted into a smaller time frame for broadcast. These match-ups for practical purposes, will automatically result in the loss of one of the three Saturday time slots. For example, Maryland is not going to agree to an 8pm start at Washington because this would result in a TV broadcast beginning at 11pm on the east coast. Similarly, Washington will not agree to a noon kick-off at Maryland, as this would mean a broadcast beginning at 9am in Seattle, when most Husky fans are still on their first soy decaf latte of the morning.

During 2023 current Pac-12 teams participated in 144 games. Of these, only 7 were played in the CT/ET time zones – this number spikes to 38 for the upcoming 2024 season due to the department of ten Pac-12 teams to conferences based in the mid-west and east:


School
Total
Games
2023 -
PT/MT
2023 -
CT/ET
2024 -
PT/MT
2024 -
CT/ET
Arizona12 11 1 9 3
Arizona State 12 12 - 7 5
California12 11 1 7 5
Colorado 12 11 1 8 4
Oregon12 11 1 9 3
Oregon State 12 12 - 12 -
Southern Cal12 11 1 9 3
Stanford 12 12 - 8 4
UCLA12 12 - 8 4
Utah12 11 1 9 3
Washington12 11 1 8 4
Washington State 12 12 - 12 -
Totals144137710638

So for practical purposes the 38 games played in the Central and Eastern time zones during the 2024 season are not viable candidates for the evening time slot on the west coast. This is a significant drop in available content – about 3 games per each Saturday evening and is one of the gaps a rebuilt Pac-12 would immediately fill.

Another critical consideration is the impact of the lost regional rivalries on television viewership on the west coast. We are in uncharted territory for 2024 as there has never been a major conference that was in existence for 115 years that essentially dissolved overnight. The rivalries built over those years will be difficult for many viewers to let go, and about half of them have already disappeared – in 2023 there were 54 conference games featuring Pac-12 teams, in 2024 there will be only 28 featuring current or former Pac-12 teams.

In terms of viewer demand, we’ll see down the road if west coast viewers are going to be as compelled to tune into a Cal v Wake Forest ACC game or a Washington v Rutgers Big Ten contest compared to the historic west coast match-ups that have been the traditional staple of Pacific time zone television broadcasts.  Whether conference realignment that drops long-time regional rivalries will pan out for the networks is literally the million-dollar question.

The current Mountain West television agreements run through the 2025 football season. Just due to the simple supply and demand you learned in Econ 101, it would appear that the combined conference would be in position to realize an enhanced contract. It’s not going to approach anywhere close to what say the SEC or Big Ten receive, but it would likely be substantially more than what the Mountain West schools are currently receiving.

There is also a definite “nothing to lose” aspect this conference would have with respect to media rights compared to the other Power conferences.  This allows for more out of the box thinking, and means that a rebuilt Pac-12 could seriously consider contract offers from the streaming services aggressively looking to enter the sports markets – i.e. Apple TV, Amazon Prime, etc. as well as the traditional networks.

A rebuilt Pac-12 would be the smallest in revenue of the Power 5,  but the current Pac-12 is also 5th in revenue production, mainly due to the fact that west coast schools in general just don’t generate the football dollars that the mid-west and southern schools do.  But another factor is that a rebuilt Pac-12 would be to some extent the Power 5 for the middle class. The majority of the schools are land grant universities, schools originally tasked with providing a high quality and affordable education to students from working class families. And they do this very well – 77% of the combined undergraduate enrollment are in state residents who pay the much lower in state tuition – the highest percentage of any of the Power 5 conferences. Compare this to other public universities such as Alabama and Oregon, where the majority of undergraduates are out of state residents paying much higher tuition.

There is a developing crisis in the US post-secondary system. Fewer US high school graduates are going on to college, and the decline is especially striking among US males. At the end of the 2021-22 academic year, female enrollment represented almost 60% of college undergrads nationwide, while male enrollment has declined to only 40%. There are serious ramifications of this development to society at large, and there are a number of reasons for the decline. One of the reasons is affordability. Given this situation, a conference composed of schools that excel in providing high quality and affordable education to middle class students should be supported in its efforts, not designated as a “lower” league.

There is a creeping elitism in intercollegiate sports with valid speculation that big-time college football is heading towards 30 or 40 teams concentrated in a couple of super conferences.  This would be immensely harmful for intercollegiate sports in general and specifically to all other schools that currently sponsor NCAA Division I athletics. The proposed NCAA revenue sharing model scheduled to take effect in 2025, will significantly widen the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. A positive check to this elitism would be not to reduce the number of power leagues to four, but to recognize the rebuilt Pac-12 as the legitimate Power 5 conference it will likely be.

Regionality in conferences should be embraced and not disregarded as being archaic. If TV football contracts are going to become the determining factor of who are members, you could very well end up with conferences looking closer to the Star Wars cantina scene, rather than a league of schools that actually look like they belong together.

But there are more compelling reasons – global warming and the well-being of student athletes.  Pacific coast schools Stanford & Cal are moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference strictly for football TV dollars. So two schools that clearly know better are giving the proverbial shoulder shrug to global warming by tripling their annual fuel consumption flying all their teams cross country. Student athletes are already challenged in balancing academic and athletic time loads. Substantially increasing the time spent traveling is simply an added burden to student athletes, without any upside to them. Unlike most of the ten departing schools, I hope the rebuilt Pac-12 takes all these issues into consideration.

 

Additions or Changes? Contact us at: [email protected] 

Statistics compiled & edited by Patrick O’Rourke, CPA Washington, DC