How Is Money From College Bowl Games Split?

The higher football game bowl season starts again Sabbatum — a 40-game idiot box bonanza that'south doubled in size since 1997, morphing into an industry of its own and a monster of mixed economies.

Socialism. Capitalism. Rich and poor.

It's all brewed together to create a postseason in which threescore% of all major-college football teams participate and 38 of them end with a victory.

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To shed light on how it all works, USA TODAY Sports reviewed NCAA fiscal records and dozens of tax forms from bowl organizations. They prove a system with many fiscal quirks, including a giant safety net for less fortunate leagues and sometimes even Notre Dame.

Spreading the wealth: The College Football Playoff is affiliated with but half dozen basin games, but it makes then much money that it subsidizes the bowl expenses of teams and conferences that never played in the Playoff.

All bowls combined last flavour to pay about $622 million to conferences and schools, including $441 million from the Playoff. After $105 million in bowl expenses, conferences and schools combined for $517 1000000 in bowl profit, according the NCAA fiscal records.

This wealth is shared with all major-higher conferences, non but the richest Power Five leagues. For example, Conference Usa sent seven teams to bowl games last year, including Onetime Dominion, which went all the fashion to the Commonwealth of the bahamas Bowl to shell Eastern Michigan, 24-twenty, in forepart of a oversupply of xiii,422.

None of the Conference USA basin teams went to the Playoff, only the Playoff still paid the league $13.9 meg in revenue-sharing. If not for that Playoff share, Briefing USA schools that went to basin games would take lost a combined $650,000 after $4.2 million in bowl expenses, records testify.

The idea was to redistribute the wealth even to those leagues that don't command huge viewership.

"The presidents and commissioners negotiated the revenue distribution when the Playoff was created back in 2012," Playoff executive director Bill Hancock told The states TODAY Sports. "Everyone had in mind to do what's best for college football game, and that'south what they did."

Special status: Notre Dame finished four-viii last season and didn't go to a bowl game. The Playoff even so paid Notre Dame $2.nine one thousand thousand as part of its revenue-sharing program. A yr earlier, Notre Dame lost in the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State and got $viii.7 million from the Playoff.

Notre Dame's big national brand gave it leverage with the Playoff in negotiations for revenue sharing. By comparison, other independent teams got $310,469 from the Playoff, including UMass, which finished ii-10, and Regular army, which finished 8-v and vanquish Due north Texas in the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

The Playoff owner: The Higher Football Playoff Administration, LLC, owns the Playoff, which started in 2014. It is a for-profit entity. Information technology is a consortium of the 10 major college football game conferences and Notre Matriarch. Much of its revenue comes from ESPN, which is paying $470 million to televise it. Subsequently expenses, the bowl games participating in the Playoff that year go xv% while the Playoff gets the remainder and shares much of information technology with its members.

The Ability Five leagues received more than 75% of the $441 1000000 paid out to all conferences and teams by the Playoff terminal season. The Pac-12, Big Ten, Southeastern, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences each got around $60 one thousand thousand-$70 million from the Playoff.

The large contract: The Big X had $123 million in bowl revenues concluding season vs. just $22 million in expenses. The Pac-12 had $116 1000000 in basin revenues vs. only virtually $10 million in expenses.

Those huge "profits" were by far more than whatever other league's last flavour. And that'southward largely because of the Rose Bowl, where Southern California beat Penn State last January, 52-49.

Fifty-fifty though that Rose Bowl was not office of the Playoff, those two leagues have a huge contract with the Rose Basin, which in turn has a huge contract with ESPN (paying about $80 million per year through 2026).

These 2 leagues split about $73 million from the Rose Bowl, plus got about $70 1000000 each in Playoff shares, in addition to other bowl game acquirement.

But it'll be a unlike story this year when the Rose Basin is part of the Playoff equally a semifinal Jan. 1. Much of the Rose'due south revenue from that will go to the Playoff and volition exist shared with more than but the Big 10 and Pac-12.

"Financially, when we do a regular Rose Bowl game, the economics are little flake stronger for united states of america than in a (Playoff) twelvemonth," said David Eads, executive managing director of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, which runs the game. "But nosotros're obviously very supportive of the (Playoff) model, and we are very excited to be hosting Oklahoma and Georgia in our (Playoff) semifinal game."

The big investor: The Walt Disney Co., owns ESPN and ABC, which are paying to televise 35 of the forty postseason games, including those huge investments in the Playoff and Rose Basin.

Simply ESPN doesn't just televise these games. Information technology likewise owns 13 major-college bowl games, mostly lower-tier games such as the Las Vegas, New Mexico and Camellia bowls, all of which will be played Sabbatum.

ESPN hopes to get a render on all these investments with ad sales, cable and satellite subscriptions, and as many eyeballs on screens equally it can get. Some might depict pocket-sized crowds simply still depict a healthy audience on telly of a million or more.

"Anecdotally (with crowd size), yous tin can accept a misperception based on what you remember the eyes are," said Clint Overby, vice president at ESPN Events. "But the reality is far unlike. And the games are strong."