Big 12’s revenue boom arrives, but the richest payouts still lag

The Big 12 is taking in more money than ever, but that does not automatically translate into every school suddenly becoming richer, at least not in the early years of this new conference footprint. For the 2024-25 sports season, the Big 12 reported $610.9 million in revenue in federal tax filings, a record figure that still sits below the Big Ten and SEC in overall scale. The same filings period is one more reminder that the conference’s “more” is being filtered through a distribution model built for stability after realignment, not a blank check for every athletic budget at the same moment.

To understand why, you have to start with what the Big 12 built when its old foundation was disrupted. After major programs announced departures for the SEC, the conference added BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston, with the league later emphasizing that the goal was to “strengthen and stabilize” the conference. The Big 12 officially welcomed the four schools as a 14-team league effective July 1, 2023, creating immediate brand value and national recruiting access for a footprint that had to rebuild its media and postseason positioning under pressure.

The conference’s financial story includes a payoff, just not an even one. In 2023-24, the Big 12 announced it would distribute a record $470 million, and it acknowledged “some dilution” tied to adding the newcomers. The Kansas City Star reported that the new schools each received $18 million in that year, while the original members saw their shares reduced as the league phased in the new arrivals. The expectation was that full shares would arrive later, with the same reporting pointing to the start of 2025-26 full distributions at a projected level of about $50 million per school.

Where the “why isn’t anyone richer” question sharpens is what sits between revenue and distribution. A separate report on UCF’s first season in the Big 12 said the conference distributed $475.997 million to 14 member institutions, with UCF receiving $20.80 million, BYU $20.67 million, Cincinnati $19.88 million, and Houston $19.57 million. That same reporting put Big 12 expenses at $530.72 million during the last fiscal year, noting that most of those costs covered conference distributions. In other words, the Big 12’s top-line growth is being largely consumed by the conference’s own financial machinery, even before schools consider what their own departments still owe for operations, coaching, facilities, and debt.

Realignment also mattered for timing. The Big 12’s revenue-sharing system did not operate in isolation while Texas and Oklahoma were on an early-SEC timetable. Sports Business Journal reported that parts of the revenue-share cuts tied to the 2023-24 cycle were used to finance payments promised to the four schools that joined in the summer, affecting how quickly continuing members could receive full value. That kind of redistribution is the opposite of a windfall, even if the conference is simultaneously posting record numbers elsewhere.

There is also the simple competitive gap. WTOP, citing AP reporting, said Big 12 and ACC revenues were record-setting for 2024-25 but continued to lag behind the Big Ten and SEC, which both crossed $1 billion in total revenue. WTOP also noted that the Big Ten’s average full-share payout was about $79.9 million, while the SEC’s came in near $72.4 million. Against that backdrop, the Big 12’s expanding distributions can look impressive locally, yet still feel modest nationally for schools trying to close the talent-and-facilities gap.

What to watch next is whether the Big 12’s projected “catch-up” actually materializes once more schools move into full revenue-share status and once the conference’s larger media-rights era fully kicks in. For BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston, the immediate question is how much of the gap closes between partial shares now and full shares beginning in 2025-26. For the rest of the league, the question is whether the record distribution totals keep climbing without new layers of dilution, especially as postseason performance and College Football Playoff participation continue to influence the size of the pools.

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