Current, Pre Pac-12 Revenue Sharing Formulas

Bumped. Good discussion going on in the threads. GO BRUINS. -N

In Nestor's FanPost about revenue sharing plans for the Pac-12, britishbruin asked what the current formulas are. I started wondering too, so I did a bit of research. Here's what I found.

According to Greg Hansen of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, for any and all football games on TV, the two teams being televised get 32% of the cut from that game, and the other eight teams get 4.5%. The inequity there is that we get more ABC and ESPN games compared to Arizona getting games on Versus, etc., so our 32% is more than their 32%. Another article from that paper states that basketball revenues are distributed much more equally, but doesn't give any detail. (Also learned from the Greg Hansen column that long ago $c said they wouldn't go to Pullman to play Wazzu, so they didn't - from 1958 to 1984. Old news to geezers, but this geezer-in-training didn't know that, and I bet most of the young'uns around here didn't either.)

Interesting details on total revenue per Pac-10 team from a Jon Wilner blog post here for FY 07-08 and FY 08-09. It includes football and basketball income but again doesn't give a formula. Wilner points out that UCLA was a close third-place in total revenue during those two years despite our football team going 10-15. That's the power of the LA market - again, more regional ABC games = more money.

A Seattle Times article from May 2009 gives a slightly different but very similar football distribution to what is above, but seems to indicate that bowl game and basketball tournament money is distributed in equal shares regardless of the participants. It also lists the strictly-football TV revenue from 2008.

After reading the above articles, I finally found the official Pac-10 Handbook (pdf).The bowl expenses are indeed divided equally, after the participating team deducts a transportation allowance,  Oddly, though NCAA basketball tournament revenues are split equally after transportation is deducted, any revenue from the postseason NIT goes 100% to the participating team.

The actual formula the Pac-10 uses to divide football TV revenues is in the Pac-10 Handbook (same pdf) on pages 75 and 76. It talks about 'units' but it basically sounds like the distributions referenced above are probably pretty accurate. The basketball formula is on page 78 of the Handbook, and with a few minor tweaks in following clauses is basically this:

Each national over-the-air network game involving two Conference teams shall be assigned a value of $233,334. Each national over-the-air network game involving one Conference team shall be assigned a value of $116,667. Each regional over-the-air network game involving either one or two Conference teams shall be assigned a value of $100,000. For each national or regional over-the-air network game, 55% of the value shall be shared equally by the appearing institution(s) and 45 percent shall be shared equally among the 10 Conference members.

 So, if we play Arizona on a national game, both teams earn $64,166.85, and the other eight teams each get $13,125.04.

I didn't find anything in the handbook specifically favoring UCLA and $c in writing. It is definitely slanted in favor of teams that get on TV, though, which in practice does favor the LA schools.

Not revenue-related, specifically, but I'm not sure how we ended up with two Thursday night games given this rule in the Handbook:

Institutions shall be limited each season to one road weekday football game while classes are in session...[stated elsewhere] excluding all Fridays after Thanksgiving.