Turns out, getting 14 teams into the March Madness field is a great way to boost the financial standing of your conference. As expected from the SEC, which placed an unprecedented 14 schools in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the conference also set a record for earnings from the NCAA’s “unit” system, according to Front Office Sports.
For context, the NCAA distributes what it refers to as “units” to each conference participating in the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. Each unit is valued at approximately $2 million, and conferences earn units based on the performance of their schools in the tournament. Essentially, every game a school participates in contributes one unit until the Final Four, meaning a school that exits in the Round of 32 would yield two units for its conference, one for each game played. Starting with 14 teams, the SEC earned 13 units immediately. (Note that a conference’s automatic qualifier does not earn a unit for its first round game but receives a sum slightly less than the full unit value.) The SEC then achieved an impressive tally of 22 wins throughout the tournament, culminating in a total of 35 units, equating to around $70 million.)
Typically, this revenue is divided evenly among member schools, although some conferences, like the ACC, have begun to distribute more funds to schools that excel in the tournament. A significant portion of this income stems from the NCAA’s lucrative media rights agreements with CBS Sports and TNT Sports, which together pay over $1 billion annually to broadcast the tournament. No doubt, the rich keep getting richer in college athletics.
