RE: UCF pay was $7.4 million from AAC
So I dug a little deeper into this...nerd alert now, if you want to click "back"...
Murschel did a similar article two years ago (for the 2016 football season and '16-'17 year) but with a little less information. I couldn't find the same from a year ago (for the 2017 football season and '17-'18 year). I hope the Orlando Sentinel or someone else covers this in another year, to get a good baseline of the end of the old media contract.
(In interviews, Aresco has already said that distributions for the '19-'20 year were up slightly, even with giving some media money back due to loss of conference basketball tournaments and spring sports).
At the macro-level, the conference expenses for the '18-'19 year look like they're just over $20M (total expenses minus distributions to schools). I don't know if that is "normal" or if starting the move bumped them up, or what. A lot of people like to harp on Aresco's salary - looks like 9% of the conference's expenses. Definitely one to watch if we get similar data in another year.
Another thought - the article showed a distribution of $1.08M to UConn. However, with the departure for the Big East, the lion's share of the $17M exit fees would be paid by withholding UConn's distribution in '18-'19 and '19-'20. I theorize that the $1.08M reflects the last of the original Big East exit fees. If we pull that out for Cincinnati and USF and also pull out the $2M Fiesta expenses for UCF that we already highlighted...then theoretical "standardized" distributions have UCF still an outlier at $5.47M and Cincinnati, USF, Memphis, Temple, Houston all between $4.354M and $4.96M. Those are six of the seven bowl teams. The seventh bowl team, Tulane sits $270k-ish ahead of ECU, SMU, and Tulsa all three of which are within $48k of each other.
The range of distribution figures fits VERY well with differentials due to how the conference handles bowl money. Without knowing specifics of how the AAC doles out bowl money, most conferences have two big variables.
1. Bowl expenses are generally reimbursed on some set calculation - the "bigger" the bowl, the bigger a traveling party you are allotted for reimbursement. Distance is also usually factored in.
2. Tickets. A big chunk of any bowl's "payout" comes in the form of the ticket allotment. You sell all your tickets, the payout actually hits the dollar figure in the news stories; you don't sell all the tickets, the cash comes up short of the public figure. Some conferences basically just give any ticket sales revenue to the school; others cover a certain amount of unsold tickets, or viewed from the other direction pay a bonus for selling above some floor; bowls like Hawaii that only like three schools can successfully sell tickets to may just be assumed to be a loss in the ticket sales column.
Definitely fits overall, without drilling down into how each school's ticket sales went (and still guessing about the calculations the conference uses).
The variations in distribution did not take into account MBB tournament credits. The OS story cites $40.1M revenue from postseasons - taking out known numbers for CFP and other bowls, I get to $11.2M AAC revenue for MBB March Madness in the 2018-2019 season. Does that sound right? We also have previously discussed those dollars being distributed equally (rather than, say, having a WCC "Gonzaga rule").
One final note - 2018-19 is a good year to look at Navy. Last year of the previously-existing independent TV contract, AND a rare non-bowl year for Navy. In another year, we should be able to see the injection of the "Navy tier" before the 2020-21 year begins the new media rights contract.
So....that $1.978M...that number is QUITE close to 1/12th of the CFP payout after the NY6 participant's $2M expenses comes out...that number is even closer, though, to precisely 60% of the $3.3M that non-bowl ECU, SMU, Tulsa received. 60% for a football only school, rather than 70% or 80%, might shake some assumptions (including how much the UConn re-adjustment might be...)
If you have read this far, please help fill in the blanks.
- Good numbers on MBB tourney $ ?
- Any info from the 2017-2018 year to fill in the gap between two Murschel articles?
- Bowl ticket sales hard data? Could start figuring out how the conference distributes bowl money.
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