Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

SEC rakes in over half a billion dollars in revenue

Breaking: The SEC has a lot of money.

The conference announced Thursday it collected and subsequently divided $584.2 million in revenue during the 2015-16 fiscal year. Each school received an average of $40.4 million, which leaves around $18.7 million for the conference office.

That number represents a sharp spike from recent years, a 286 percent increase since 2008-09.

“Each of our institutions sponsor from 16 to 22 intercollegiate athletics teams and offer their student-athletes in those sports the highest level of commitment to their athletics and academic experience,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “This distribution from the SEC helps our universities’ athletics programs continue to fully support broad-based opportunities for thousands of female and male student-athletes in all sports.”

According to a copy of the SEC’s tax return obtained by CBS Sports, television and radio revenue grew from $311.9 million in 2014-15 to $420.1 million in 2015-16, a growth made possible by SEC Network. Postseason revenue also grew from $162.8 million to $180.6 million, thanks to the College Football Playoff.

The 2015-16 fiscal year also represented Mike Slive‘s swan song as commissioner, for which he was paid nearly $4.2 million. New commissioner Sankey made $1.2 million for the year.