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The Big 12 is making more money than ever. So why isn’t anyone richer?
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- The Big 12 is making more money than ever. So why isn’t anyone richer?
The Big 12 Conference faced a question of survival five years ago after its two biggest football brands decided to leave the league for greener pastures in the SEC :
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Should the Big 12 stay at eight members and risk losing relevance after the departure of Texas and Oklahoma?
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Or should it try to stabilize itself by adding four new members from outside the lucrative Power Five conferences — BYU, Central Florida, Houston and Cincinnati ?
The Big 12 chose the latter, helping the league survive. But there has been a cost to that, according to newly filed tax returns and recent revenue projections obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
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At a time when other Power Four league members have seen their wealth expand dramatically, the Big 12's longtime incumbent members still are looking at flatlined revenue shares for the foreseeable future, according to projections. Meanwhile, the Big 12 has fallen into a distant fourth place in total revenue , far behind the Big Ten and SEC, with the ACC coming in at third.
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Why the Big 12's financial position is precarious
Costs are soaring and concerns are rising about the financial dominance of the Big Ten and SEC , making it a bad time for a competing league to have stagnating revenue shares. Unlike the Big Ten and SEC , the Big 12 and ACC support a new bipartisan bill Congress that aims to provide stability and potential new revenue for those leagues, with an option to pool their television rights with others. Those leagues don't want to further risk having their biggest brands poached by the Big Ten or SEC in a position of weakness, as described by Sen. Maria Cantwell at a U.S. Senate hearing on the bill June 3.
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"They think that's what's going to happen to them next, that somebody's going to come in and rearrange the deck chairs of those conferences, steal the eyeball schools and basically leave everybody with everything else," Cantwell said.
Examining the Big 12's distribution amounts over time
Here are some examples of Big 12 distribution amounts eroding over time, based on projections provided by schools and tax returns since 2022, when the league had only 10 members including Texas and Oklahoma. The money primarily comes from league television rights fees, plus postseason football revenue and other shared sources. It represents a significant portion of a school's athletics budget and helps pay rising expenses such as revenue-sharing with players and coaches' pay .
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Iowa State:In fiscal 2022, the Cyclones got $44 million from the Big 12. In fiscal 2025, it was down to $41.2 million. For fiscal 2026, ending June 30, the state board of regents last year projected conference and NCAA revenue of $35.6 million. That number is expected to creep closer to $40 million for all Big 12 schools with recent news the league projects $710 million in revenue for fiscal 2026, $100 million more than in fiscal 2025
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Oklahoma State:In fiscal 2022, the Cowboys got $44.9 million from the Big 12. In fiscal 2025, it went down to $38 million. For fiscal 2026, the school told USA TODAY Sports in March it projects a Big 12 distribution of about $36 million.
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Texas Tech:In fiscal 2022, the Red Raiders got $43.5 million. In fiscal 2025, it went down to $39.7 million. For fiscal 2026, the school said Feb. 26 that it budgeted for a Big 12 distribution of $36.5 million. Their final number for fiscal 2026 also is expected to be higher after participating in the College Football Playoff last season.
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Arizona State:The Sun Devils joined the Big 12 in fiscal 2025, starting in the summer of 2024. They received a full distribution share of $43 million that year from the Big 12 but told USA TODAY Sports May 27 they are forecasting about $36 million in fiscal 2026.
Other Big 12 schools face similar trajectories or declined to provide projections for 2026.
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This outlook might not change much for several years as the league's TV deals with ESPN and Fox don't expire until 2031 . Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark told reporters May 29 net distributions exceeded forecasts for fiscal 2026 but declined to say by how much.
"The net distributions, we're not discussing right now," Yormark said.
More mouths to feed now in the Big 12
Yormark said the Big 12's total net distributable revenue will be the most in Big 12 history for fiscal 2026, up from $557 million in 2025.
The issue here is math. That revenue is now being divided among 16 schools instead of 10 in 2022 and 14 equivalent shares in 2025, including four half-shares received by BYU, UCF, Houston and Cincinnati. Those schools agreed to receive half-shares for two years after joining the Big 12 in 2023. Fiscal 2026 will be the first year they receive full shares of around $36-40 million.
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Even with record revenues of $710 million in 2026, the Big 12 usually has nearly $55 million in expenses, including staff pay, according to tax returns. That would leave about $655 million to split among 16 schools — about $40 million each, compared to $70-90 million for full-share members in the Big Ten and SEC in 2025.
"In FY 2025, the money was split 14 ways (accounting for the four half-shares), and in 2026 it will be split 16 ways," former Fox Sports Networks President Bob Thompson told USA TODAY Sports. "Without significant year-over-year increases to the rights fees, the two new shares are going to have to be funded by dilution to annual payouts."
This was not the case when the Big 12 added Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah in 2024 . Those four schools came from a fellow power conference, the Pac-12, and were granted full revenue shares in their first year of Big 12 membership in fiscal 2025, which started in July 2024.
TV revenue went up only 4% with UCF, BYU, Houston, Cincinnati
The reason Colorado, Arizona, ASU and Utah joined the Big 12 with full shares was a decision by the league in conjunction with ESPN, which helped foot the full-share bill for the four former Pac-12 teams , unlike for UCF, BYU, Houston and Cincinnati. The former Pac-12 schools are generally bigger brands than those other four new members are collectively. They also add more viewership for time slots in western time zones.
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The Big 12's tax returns reflect this. They show the league's television contract revenue increased only by about 4% in fiscal 2024 after adding UCF, BYU, Houston and Cincinnati.
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FY 2023 TV contract revenue:$283.6 million with 10 members, including Texas and Oklahoma.
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FY 2024:$294.7 million, up only 4% from 2023. This is when the league had 14 members, including Texas, Oklahoma, plus new members UCF, BYU, Houston and Cincinnati.
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FY 2025:$336.6 million with 16 members, including new members Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah. This was the first year without Texas and Oklahoma and their prior $40-million shares.
By contrast, BYU, UCF, Houston and Cincinnati hit jackpot
These four Big 12 schools have a much different outlook than the rest of the Big 12. They joined the league in 2023 to gain more money and exposure in a Power Four league. It was like hitting a jackpot for them after coming from generally lesser resources. For example:
∎ UCF: In fiscal 2023, UCF got $9.5 million from its old league, the American Athletic Conference. But after jumping to the Big 12 in fiscal 2024, UCF got a half share of $20.8 million, followed by a $20 million half share in fiscal 2025.
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UCF now projects to get a full Big 12 share of $36.8 million in fiscal 2026.
∎ The financial trajectory is similar for BYU, Cincinnati and Houston. For example, Houston got $8.8 million in fiscal 2023 from the AAC, its previous league.
The move up to the Big 12 made budget issues "easier," Houston athletic director Eddie Nunez told USA TODAY Sports last September . "We have this (Big 12) revenue coming in that we have not been living off (previously)."
But the addition of these four schools has affected the revenue-sharing equation for the rest, especially the longtime incumbent members such as Iowa State. Iowa State said its future Big 12 distribution projections are based on forecasts from the Big 12 and are impacted by several factors, including annual operating results of the league and the "number of teams in the conference."
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The Big 12's survival tradeoff
The Big 12 can't really be blamed for these circumstances after the departure of Oklahoma and Texas . It was fighting to survive when it moved to add BYU, Houston, UCF and Cincinnati in 2021 under then-commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
"I started in this job five years ago, and my first phone call was when we had a couple of teams that were leaving the league," Kansas State President Richard Linton told reporters May 29. "And nobody knew what the future was."
The league couldn't have seen around the corner then that the Pac-12 would implode in the summer of 2023, making Utah and other Pac-12 schools willing to join the Big 12 after having no incentive to do so previously
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But what's happened as a result is basic realignment arithmetic, along with the Big 12's shrinking future financial stature in the College Football Playoff's distribution formula . If a conference is going to add new members, it wants those new members to help expand the revenue pie enough to pay for those new mouths to feed in revenue-sharing.
It didn't happen in the Big 12. It did in the Big Ten, whose revenues increased by $540 million from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025 after it added four teams from the Pac-12 — USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington. The Big Ten's television partner, Fox, was willing to pay more to add Oregon and Washington even after adding USC and UCLA.
"Fox brought new money to the table for Oregon and for Washington," then-Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said in 2023 .
Big 12 commissioner: 'We're doing everything we can'
Fox also owns 61% of The Big Ten Network, another big revenue generator for that league. Similarly, ESPN owns the ACC Network, whose distribution expanded after the addition of Stanford, California and SMU in fiscal 2025. The ACC's television revenue jumped from $487 million in fiscal 2024 to $588.8 million in fiscal 2025, helping the ACC rank third in total revenues in 2025 at $826.5 million, with full distribution shares ranging from $43-55 million.
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The Big 12 doesn't have a TV network like the Big Ten, SEC and ACC. Its television contract revenue streams are otherwise largely fixed through 2031.
It's why Yormark is trying to find other ways to bring in money in the meantime. He said creating new value to help close the gap with other leagues is "the No. 1 thing I think about when I wake up."
"We're doing everything we can," Yormark said May 29 . "You know, there's a lot of fixed revenue. You think about the conference business. There's not as much variable revenue as you'd like, but we're taking as much advantage of the variable pieces of the business as we can."
The Big 12 also arranged a deal with private capital companies that gives each member the option to take a $30 million line of credit if they need it to keep up . Yormark called it a "safety net." No Big 12 school has publicly accepted it yet.
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Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer . Email: bschroten@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Big 12 revenue gains aren't translating to payouts
