The SEC is closing in on being a billion-dollar conference: Revenues continued to go up in the most recent fiscal year and are expected to keep climbing amid a new TV deal, College Football Playoff expansion and the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.
The SEC announced Thursday that it distributed $741 million to its 14 schools in the 2022-23 fiscal year, meaning an average payout of $51.2 million. That’s up from the average payout of $49.9 million during the previous fiscal year.
That revenue comes mainly from television deals (CBS and ESPN up until this year), football bowl games, the Playoff, the SEC Championship Game, the SEC men’s basketball tournament and NCAA championships.
The current fiscal year largely will feature the same sources of revenue, so the average payout may only go up slightly. But starting with the 2024-25 fiscal year, the new TV deal with ESPN will kick in, and it’s expected to be worth around $811 million. There will be the 12-team Playoff, which will pay out more in television and other revenue to all conferences. And the addition of the Longhorns and Sooners should help attendance and other revenue.
The SEC still would be short of the Big Ten, with its new $1.1 billion TV deal and addition of four schools (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington). But the…
