SEC Member Schools Split Record $127.2M '07-08 In Revenue
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SEC Sets Its Revenue-Sharing
Record For 18th Straight Year |
The SEC on the last day of its annual spring meetings Friday said that it “topped its revenue-sharing record again in 2007-08 with $127.2[M],” up from $122M in ’06-07, according to Tommy Hicks of the Mobile PRESS-REGISTER. It marked the 18th straight year the SEC “bettered the previous year’s take.” Split 12 ways, each SEC school averaged $10.6M from this year’s proceeds. Of the $127.2M, $50.6M was derived from football TV, $25.3M from bowls, $13.7M from the SEC Championship Game, $13M from basketball TV, $2.8M from the men’s basketball tournament and $21.8M from NCAA championships. Not included in the total was $11.6M “retained by institutions participating in bowls and $720,000 divided among all 12 schools from the NCAA for academic enhancement.” The SEC also announced that it “had returned $1.2[M] in refunds to just less than 11,000 ticket-holders who were unable to attend the final days” of the men’s basketball tournament when it was moved to Georgia Tech Univ. after a tornado struck the Georgia Dome (Mobile PRESS-REGISTER, 5/31). SEC Commissioner Mike Slive announced that the SEC “will host a cookout next Thursday in Atlanta to show the league’s appreciation for those who helped when the tornado hit.” More than 160 people from the Georgia Dome, Georgia Tech and “other officials will be invited to the event which will be held at the Dome” (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 5/31).
SEC TV: SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL’s Ourand & Smith write senior execs from CBS, ESPN, Comcast and Fox Cable last week at the SEC’s meetings made their “final pitches for the SEC’s TV package, a process one network executive described as being ‘close to the finish line.’” With CBS and ESPN “emerging as the clear favorites to renew their deals, both of which end after the 2008-09 season, the prospects for a league network could be slipping.” Sources said that the SEC’s deal with CBS “pays about $30[M] annually, … whereas the ESPN deal pays the league about $21[M] a year.” Both of those numbers are “expected to increase dramatically during the round of negotiations” (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 6/2 issue). In Nashville, David Climer writes Fox is “preparing to throw a boatload of money at the league in an attempt to wrest the SEC’s prime football games away from CBS.” Slive indicated that the proposed SEC net “would join a lineup of other networks that have contracts with the SEC.” Slive: “If we were to do a network, we’d still want a national and national cable package over the air. Then our own channel would be part of that” (Nashville TENNESSEAN, 6/2). Slive said that after the SEC ADs meet in August, the league “should know whether it will start its own TV channel in August 2009.” Slive: “Clearly, distribution is the problem the Big Ten and Mountain West networks, as well as the NFL Network, have encountered” (Memphis COMMERCIAL APPEAL, 5/31). In Memphis, Ron Higgins wrote one of the “hurdles Slive is facing in starting a channel is incorporating the fact that seven or eight SEC schools already have pay-per-view options for some of their athletic events” (Memphis COMMERCIAL APPEAL, 5/31).
BASKETBALL TOURNEY: SEC Exec Associate Commissioner Mark Womack said that the conference is “interested in holding a men’s basketball tournament at FedExForum” (Memphis COMMERCIAL APPEAL, 5/31).
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