Where Does the Big Ten’s $1.37 Billion Revenue Distribution Come From?
It is becoming tradition in the offseason that the moment we stop talking about the draft, we start talking about money. This year appears to be no different as the Big Ten announced it had distributed $1.37 billion to its 18 member institutions for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The Big Ten Revenue Distribution model is quite interesting, and I thought worth exploring further. Where does a Big Ten $1.37bn revenue distribution come from and how do they decide who gets what?
A Record Number for the Big Ten
The $1.37 billion distribution marks the largest in conference history, up $490 million on the $883 million distributed the previous year. The Big Ten framed it simply in its announcement, flagging record media rights, a successful first year of the expanded College Football Playoff and the first full season with 18 member schools following the arrivals of Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington.
What are the Big Ten Revenue Streams?
The Big Ten Conference is technically a not-for-profit organisation. Therefore, you would expect its revenue, after costs, to be distributed to its members. But where does that revenue pot come from? There are a few distinct streams which flow in from different directions before being pooled and split.
The TV deal is at the Core
In August 2022, the conference signed a seven-year deal worth more than $7 billion with Fox, CBS and NBC, running through the 2029-30 season. Fox holds the Big-Noon Saturday slot and the bulk of the football inventory and co-owns the Big Ten Network, which carries second-tier games and a load of basketball and Olympic sports content. CBS and NBC each pay around $350 million per year for their packages. This deal is the main driver for the per-school pay out increasing, given 2024-25 was the first year that the new deal operated in full.
The College Football Playoff adds performance-based money on top
The CFP distributes performance payments for progress in the playoffs to conferences, not directly to schools. In the 2024-25 season, conferences received $4 million per team that made the 12-team playoff bracket, another $4 million for advancing through the quarters and $6 million for each team reaching the semis and national championship game respectively. The Big Ten had four teams in the first expanded playoff; Ohio State (the champions), Penn State (semis), Indiana (1st round) and Oregon (quarters), which significantly contributed to the increased pay out. It also explains why Ohio State ($91.57M) and Penn State ($88.92M) sit significantly above everyone else in their individual distributions.
March Madness adds a third layer
The NCAA distributes basketball tournament money to conferences through what is known as the “units” system. The mechanisms for this are beyond the scope of this article but here is a link with some detail, if you are interested.
I haven’t been able to pin down the exact 2025 figures, but to give a sense of scale, in 2026 the Big Ten earned c$70 million across both men’s and women’s tournaments.
Embed from Getty ImagesBig Ten Network Adds Additional Revenue
I mentioned it earlier, but the Big Ten co-owns the Big Ten Network with Fox (39% Big Ten/61% Fox). This brings in some additional revenue from subscriber fees and advertising revenues.
It is difficult to say how much as it is not clear what is split and how much this contributes. It is likely however to be the cherry on the icing on the cake.
Not Everyone Gets the Same
When it comes to distributing revenue to its members (the schools), the Big Ten follows a baseline model of “broadly equal” to its fully vested members. But “fully vested member” is the important phrase. Today the fully vested members are everyone but Oregon and Washington.
Oregon and Washington are currently on slightly different terms. They joined they Big Ten in 2024 on a reduced base-share of $30 million each, increasing by $1 million per school per year through to 2029–30. Interestingly, it is Fox, not the other conference members, that contributes the extra $1m pa. This was negotiated to make the additional conference expansion work.
USC and UCLA who negotiated joining the Big Ten slightly earlier and came in as full members from the start. This was perhaps a function of timing but also reflective of how much their market value (Los Angeles being the country’s second-largest media market) was worth to the conference.
The Oregon and Washington position is not uncommon for the conference. Going back further, when Nebraska joined in 2011, they were phased into full revenue shares over six years. Maryland and Rutgers followed the same path when they arrived in 2014. Both also took loans from the conference, which pushed back their timeline to full shares even further.
How was the $1.37bn distributed?
As per the Athletic, the $1.37bn distribution was broken down as follows:
| School | Amount | Notes for 2025 |
| Ohio State | $91.55m | CFP National Champions |
| Penn State | $88.9m | CFP Semi Finalists |
| Indiana | $81m | CFP 1st round |
| Other 13 full members | $76-79m | |
| Oregon | $48.4m | CFP Quarter Finalists |
| Washington | $46.7m |
The above shows how the College Football playoffs can act as a key swing factor for revenue earned by a school. There is a clear link between success and revenue.
Will the Equal Split Hold?
The bulk of the revenue distribution is the TV rights and the Big Ten currently pools and distributes it equally among fully vested members. That has been the model for decades in a conference that prides itself on its collective strength. A smaller school like Purdue or Northwestern receives broadly the same base distribution as Ohio State because the conference functions as a collective unit.
The collective strength also goes further than just sporting prowess. We must remember that these schools also collaborate in terms of academic research. Viewed through that lens, Northwestern are the strongest school in the Big Ten, ranked 7th nationally.
But some do question whether the sporting success of say, Ohio State should benefit schools so heavily that do not perform as well on the field. If the top tier of the Big Ten drives a disproportionate share of Fox and CBS’s ratings, should they not receive more of the revenue?
There are examples of the model changing across the FBS. The ACC restructured its revenue distribution to reward schools based on viewership. For example, if Clemson drives 10% of the conference’s TV audience, Clemson gets 10% of the relevant pool. The logic being that the schools generating the most eyeballs should be compensated accordingly.
Whether the pressure builds in a meaningful way to follow suit in the Big Ten remains to be seen.
From Strength to Strength
By any measure, the Big Ten is in remarkable financial health. A $1.37 billion pool, approaching c$80 million per fully vested school before any CFP bonuses, is a number most global sports leagues would be envious of. The current TV deal runs through 2029–30 and should only escalate from hereon in. The expanded CFP is generating more revenue than the old system ever did.
Oregon and Washington are on a glide path to full shares and benefiting from making the jump to the Big Ten. It is an unfair comparison but in their last season in the PAC-12, $33.6m was distributed to each.
Tensions around equal distribution will bubble up occasionally, especially if the top of the Big Ten continues to dominate college football. But conference realignment and expansion is likely to continue as the game evolves so it is not a question that needs an immediate answer.
And yet is it enough?
As we know, the cost of running college sports is continuing to grow and more investment is needed for schools to fully reshape their operations and take advantage of commercial opportunities. $80m per school is a great start but will it be enough in the long term? Money out still needs to match money in.
This is an equation athletic departments need to ponder as time goes on. It is also why the private capital/equity conversation will remain in the background for the foreseeable future.
