March Madness Daily: The rich are getting richer
The SEC just shattered the record for games played in a tournament, and will therefore receive a record NCAA payout.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re chanting S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!
Eben: One of the coolest things that we’ve done in Sportico’s first five years was this video 👇 explaining how the NCAA distributes money for performance during March Madness. There’s currently about $230 million that the governing body gives out for the men’s tournament, and the system—called “units”—couldn’t be more complicated.
But in layman’s terms, for every game a conference’s teams play in the tournament before the final, the NCAA will pay that league about $2 million. Conferences then distribute the money to their members.
The SEC placed 14 of its 16 school into the tournament this year, and they will combine to play 35 games before the final. That’s 35 units, for about $70 million. It’s the largest haul ever for a single conference in a single tournament.
It’s not just a record, however. It is by far the largest number we’ve ever seen. The previous record was 25 units earned by the ACC in 2016. The SEC cleared it by 10 games! Here are the largest unit hauls ever 👇
You’ll notice that there’s not a lot of 🟡 on that chart. Prior to this tournament, the SEC hadn’t had a single tournament of even 20 units. Jacob wrote last week about the SEC’s glow-up—it involves the conference hiring the former Big East commissioner, more self-promotion, and pressure on schools to hire bigger name coaches. The vibe is very much: We have all this money, we should probably be good at basketball, too.
This $70 million won’t really move the needle—per team, it’s roughly what each school for a single football game. But in the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes more money.”
Programming note: We’ll be sending daily business nuggets throughout the NCAA tournaments. If that’s not your thing, you can opt out of daily March Madness posts by updating your settings here or with the button below. We’ll return to normal programming in April.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.