The Southeastern Conference didn’t do quite as well for itself in the 2022 fiscal year.
The SEC announced its revenue distribution Thursday morning, and while the conference continues to bring in significant money, more than every other Power Five conference other than the Big Ten, it experienced a decline from the 2021 fiscal year.
The conference announced $721.8 million in total revenue for the 2021-22 fiscal year, which was divided among the SEC’s 14 universities, averaging out to $49.9 million per school.
Per the report, $698.5 million was distributed directly from the conference office. There was also $23.3 million retained by universities that participated in 2021-22 football bowl games “to offset travel and other related bowl expenses.”
According to USA Today’s Steve Berkowitz, the SEC experienced a “nearly 4% decline in revenue,” from 2021, when the conference reported $833.4 million in total revenue, an average of $54.6 million per school.
Per Berkowitz, the decline wasn’t unexpected and should be an anomaly going forward.
“Most of the decline in the SEC’s 2022 revenue and distributions can be attributed to each school having received a $4 million share of a signing bonus that the conference got when it signed a new football TV deal with ESPN in December 2020, which put that money into the fiscal 2021 cycle,” Berkowitz wrote.
That new TV deal will go into effect in the fall of 2024 and bring with it a revenue increase that is expected to only grow significantly once Texas and Oklahoma join the conference in 2025, Berkowitz added.
“The conference’s total revenue has varied as we manage through pandemic realities, transition of our media agreements and prepare for membership expansion,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement provided to USA Today. “We are confident the conference’s revenues will stabilize and increase significantly as we move forward to a new media agreement and growth to a 16-member conference.”
By way of comparison, here is the reported revenue for the other Power Five conferences for the 2021 fiscal year (the SEC is the first conference to announce its revenue for 2022).
- Big Ten — $679.8 million (a decline of $89 million), $48.6 million per school.
- ACC — $578.3 million (an increase of $82 million), $39.6 million per school.
- Big 12 — $356 million (a decline of $53 million), $35.6 million per school.
- Pac-12 — $343.5 million (a decline of $190 million), $28.6 million per school.