Comcast fiasco, departures resulted in massive budget hits to Pac-12 schools | Analysis
Jon Wilner
Feb. 2, 2025
From Seattle to Salt Lake City, Boulder to Eugene and all points in between, the legacy Pac-12 schools have revealed one final act of self-inflicted budgetary pain.
Financial reports were due to the NCAA in the middle of January and have since been published on school websites or made available upon request.
They reveal the impact of the negotiated settlement with Washington State and Oregon State and the
Comcast overpayment fiasco that walloped the conference in winter 2023.
That combination resulted in $125 million withheld from conference distributions over two years, with the amount split evenly among the 10 legacy schools.
The breakdown:
— The negotiated settlement in fall 2023 resulted in each of the departed schools having $5 million withheld from their conference distributions, with an additional $1.5 million “supplement contribution” added to the tab.
If we assume the supplement contributions were made in the 2024 fiscal year — it wasn’t required: they had until Dec. 31, 2024 — then all 10 would have experienced a $6.5 million decrease in conference distributions that was reflected in the reports submitted to the NCAA a few weeks ago.
— The Comcast scandal involved the company overpaying the Pac-12 Networks for 10 years. Conference executives learned of the problem in 2017 but did not alert Comcast, which discovered the overpayments during an internal audit in 2022.
Comcast then withheld a total of $72 million, according to former commissioner George Kliavkoff’s court declaration in a
lawsuit filed against the Pac-12 by two executives fired in the aftermath of the scandal.
That hit was shared equally by all 12 schools and impacted both the 2023 and 2024 fiscal year budgets, although it is not known exactly how much was withheld each year.
In its 2024 financial report to the NCAA, Utah showed a $17 million operating shortfall. An addendum to the report noted:
“Most of the deficit can be traced to the breakup of the Pac-12 Conference and significantly reduced distributions due to: The negotiated exit agreement; Legal fees; Overpayment of prior year television distributions.”
Asked for details on the “overpayment” category, an athletic department spokesperson told the Hotline that Utah wasn’t “able to provide such information.” (Presumably, the matter was governed by nondisclosure clauses in the Pac-12’s agreement with Comcast.)
However, the NCAA financial reports illuminate the total damage caused by the Comcast issue and the negotiated settlement, with several schools, including Utah, showing dramatic reductions in certain revenue streams.
At this point, we should step back from the details and make clear two important aspects of the financial reporting system:
— Pac-12 distributions in the 2024 fiscal year came from four primary buckets: the media rights deals with ESPN, Fox and the Pac-12 Networks’ carriage deals; football postseason revenue (e.g., the College Football Playoff); NCAA tournament performance payments; and conference revenue unrelated to media rights, March Madness or the CFP. Each school handles its accounting in slightly different ways.
— The media rights revenue reported by the schools covers local radio agreements, sponsorship deals and digital and e-commerce rights, as well as the Pac-12’s television contracts. As a result, the amounts vary widely from campus to campus and
do not match the media distributions reported in the Pac-12’s federal tax filings. (Those only reflect the deals with Fox, ESPN and the Pac-12 Networks.)
Our examination of NCAA reports unearthed the damage done to athletic department budgets.
For example, Utah showed a $9.9 million shift in net revenue from the Pac-12 in the line item that does not include media rights or football postseason payments.
The Utes booked a $3 million surplus in the 2023 fiscal year and a $6.9 million shortfall in 2024.
How much can be attributed to the Comcast fiasco specifically in 2024 is unclear. But the decrease in conference revenue contributed to the Utes experiencing a deep-red bottom line. One of the most fiscally responsible athletic departments in the former Pac-12 had a $17 million operational shortfall.
Oregon revealed a similar shift: The Ducks reported a $1.8 million surplus in conference revenue (excluding media rights and football postseason) in 2023 and an $8.2 million shortfall in 2024 — a swing of $10 million.
At the risk of oversimplifying, we could draw the following conclusions from Utah and Oregon showing a $10 million swing: Given that $6.5 million is rooted in the negotiated settlement with Washington State and Oregon State, that seemingly would leave $3.5 million to the reduction in revenue connected to the Comcast fiasco. (Out of the $6 million total Comcast wallop over two years.)
Colorado also showed a substantial reduction in conference distributions — but over two years. The Buffaloes booked an $8.3 million surplus in the 2022 fiscal year; that figure dropped to $2 million in 2023 and $1.8 million in 2024.
UCLA seemingly accounted for the Comcast reduction and the settlement withholdings in the line item reflecting media rights: After reporting $27.8 million in 2022, the Bruins showed $19.9 million in 2024.
More clarity to the financial picture will arrive in May, when the Pac-12’s tax filings for 2024 — the legacy schools’ final year in the conference — are disclosed. They will include conference distributions from media rights and the football and basketball postseasons.
But enough information is currently available to indicate each legacy school has absorbed a hit of roughly $12 million resulting from the Comcast scandal and the settlement that followed the breakup of the conference.
That’s the equivalent of one year’s salary for the football coach and his entire staff.
It’s enough to handle the annual travel costs for every varsity sport.
It’s almost enough to cover the football roster ($15 million, approximately) once the revenue-sharing model takes hold across the Power Four.
And both situations can, of course, be traced directly to the same source: years of terrible leadership by the commissioners and university presidents that end up hurting the athletes — and passing the cost of doing business onto the fans.
Jon Wilner:
jwilner@bayareanewsgroup.com.
www.seattletimes.com