the reason I say "revenue sharing" is this.
in order to share revenue, there has to be revenue to share.
ergo, the sports that generate revenue would/should offer the most revenue-sharing opportunities.
on the other hand, if you adopt a model where athletes are paid for participation - like a 'regular' employee, then all of the non-revenue sports will expect to get the same as the major revenue sports.
I see it like the difference between a commission and a non-commission employee.
nothing against the 'olympic' sports, but they don't generate any revenue. CBS, NBC and Fox are not shelling out over a Billion dollars to show rowing or track.
Plans have been discussed at the national level and introduced at the state level in CA. Once the numbers are crunched interested parties tend to run for the hills as it would create some interesting budgeting meetings. The CA bill AFAIK is stalled as it would create some “fiscal excitement“ in the UC system.
Here is one person’s discussion of the Booker plan. The CA plan is roughly similar. He appears to include walk-ons in the revenue sharing.
What Might Revenue Sharing Look Like?
The College Athletes Bill of Rights, which was
introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) in December 2020, states that schools that compete in revenue-generating sports would participate in 50-percent revenue sharing, minus the cost of scholarships.
From Sen. Booker’s
website:
For example, Division 1 women’s basketball players will receive 50 percent of the total revenue generated by their play after deducting the cost of scholarships awarded to all Division 1 women’s basketball players.
The sports that would participate in this proposed revenue sharing would include football, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball.
In the Pac-12 athletes’
#WeAreUnited statement that was published on The Players’ Tribune in August 2020, the first demand under the “Fair Market Pay, Rights & Freedoms” subheading was “Distribute 50% of each sport’s total conference revenue evenly among athletes in their respective sports.”
The Pac-12 reported $530.4 million in revenue during the 2020 fiscal year, according to
USA TODAY, which reported that the figure “does not take into account the equity value of the Pac-12 Networks, the conference’s fully self-owned television and video content provider whose expenses help result in the conference passing less money to its member schools than the other conferences.”
A 50-percent share of the conference’s revenue, not including the value of the Pac-12 Networks, would mean $265.2 million would be earmarked for the conference’s athletes in a hypothetical revenue-sharing model. According to its
2019 Form 990 filing, the Pac-12 distributed more than $386 million to its member schools, which is roughly $32.2 million per school.
Ten of the 12 schools in the Pac-12 are public universities – all but Stanford and USC – and that means their FRS reports are considered public records. We obtained the 2019 FRS for each of the 10 public schools in the Pac-12, since universities are still responding to requests for their 2020 FRS reports. Collectively, those 10 schools reported more than $515 million in football revenue during the 2019 fiscal year. In an effort to calculate a ballpark estimate of a hypothetical 50-percent revenue share, we divided that revenue in half, then divided that amount equally among the total number of football players who were listed on the 2020 football rosters for the 10 public universities in the Pac-12.
The math comes out to $256,052.84 per athlete, which could pass for a lower-end Power 5 football assistant coach’s salary.
Once again, this is just a reference point of what could be an even higher total for the Pac-12’s football-related revenue, when factoring in revenue that flows into the conference office but isn’t distributed. It’s also probably fair to assume USC’s football revenue is in a neighborhood that’s more similar to that of Washington ($84 million in 2019) or Oregon ($72 million) neighborhood rather than Washington Sate ($44 million) or Oregon State ($37 million).
How much would athletes who compete in sports besides football receive in a world where there was 50-percent revenue sharing by sport?
Using the same process used for the football estimates above (adding the sport-related revenue reported by each of the 10 public schools in the Pac-12 in the 2019 fiscal year, cutting it in half, then dividing it by the number of athletes who are listed on those 10 Pac-12 schools’ rosters), the rough estimate of revenue share per Pac-12 men’s basketball athlete would be around $325,000, which is roughly an additional $75,000 per player compared to the hypothetical football revenue share.
If a 50-percent revenue share existed in the Pac-12, an estimate by AthleticDirectorU using the same process showed women’s basketball athletes would receive more than $38,000 per athlete, while female gymnasts and women’s tennis players would receive just over $19,000 per athlete.
AthleticDirectorU looks at how increasing athletic department revenues are spent and how the revenue sharing required in the proposed College Athletes Bill of Rights would impact spending.
athleticdirectoru.com