March Madness Money

[dtilque]

How is the money from the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament divvied up? I’m talking about TV money and ticket sales. How much goes to the participating schools, the host schools, or is kept by the NCAA?

Also, are there host schools for the regionals? I know there are for the subregionals and my guess is there isn’t one for the F4. But I’m not sure about the regionals. What do the host schools actually do?

[dtilque]

Bump. I asked about a month ago, but no answer then. Perhaps now that March Madness is upon us, someone will know the answer.

[anson2995]

@dtilque

How is the money from the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament divvied up? I’m talking about TV money and ticket sales. How much goes to the participating schools, the host schools, or is kept by the NCAA?

This article on the profitability of college basketball is a year old, but it describes the system accurately.

The more than $400 million that CBS will distribute to the NCAA this year for the men’s tournament will go to the conferences based on the number of games played by their schools in the tournament over the past six seasons.

The conferences then distribute the money to the schools. So even a losing school from a successful conference will get to cash a big check, likely a much bigger check than a school that dominates a small conference.

As far as income from hosting, schools get a block of tickets and that’s it. Typically, the arena gets 10% of revenue from tickets, plus concessions, parking, etc. If the school owns the arena, they’d get that money. The NCAA keeps the rest.