The conference suffered an expected but massive blow with a shortened football season and significant COVID testing costs.
A once-in-a-century pandemic resulted in a once-in-a-decade revenue hit for the Pac-12 and its member universities. The conference on Friday reported $344 million in revenue for the 2021 fiscal year, according to federal tax filings provided to the Hotline in response to a request.
That figure constitutes the lowest revenue total for the Pac-12 since 2013 — the first year of the current media rights agreement with Fox and ESPN and the inaugural year of the Pac-12 Networks. The revenue plunge caused by COVID and the truncated 2020 football season resulted in the conference distributing an average of $19.8 million to each school, a drop of 41 percent from the prior year , when the pandemic had a negligible fiscal impact. The Pac-12’s campus distributions, which help support athletic department operations, lagged far behind some Power Five peers in FY21. The SEC, for example, played a full football season and distributed $54.6 million per school, according to USA Today. “While the global pandemic significantly impacted our 2020-21 financial results, I am incredibly proud of our conference’s collective commitment to the health and safety of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports,” said Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, whose tenure began on the first day of the 2022 fiscal year. “We are encouraged by the substantial return to pre-pandemic levels of revenue and distributions that our 2021-22 financial results will show when reported this coming year.”The Pac-12 spent $5.3 million on COVID tests by Quidel, the San Diego-based diagnostics company whose rapid antigen tests allowed the conference to restart its football season in early November of 2020 — weeks after the Big Ten restarted and two months after the Big 12, SEC and ACC began play.The Pac-12 Networks were hit hard, as well. Revenue dropped 64 percent — from $118 million in the year before the pandemic to $43 million during the COVID year. In a normal football season, the networks air three dozen football games In 2020, they showed just one: San Diego State at Colorado, the only non-conference game played by a Pac-12 team.“These financial results are not unexpected given the tumultuous times our world has experienced,’’ said Oregon president Michael Schill, chair of the Pac-12 board. “I am pleased to see revenue and distributions making rebounds now as the impacts of the pandemic subside.” Former commissioner Larry Scott, who steered the conference through the pandemic, was credited with $3.7 million in salary during the 2020 calendar year, a 20 percent year-over-year drop. Over the last five full years of his tenure, Scott received $23.8 million in total compensation, according to Pac-12 tax filings. Meanwhile, the Pac-12 Networks distributed approximately $11 million to each campus during that span, according to Pac-12 records and Hotline research. All in all, the Pac-12 reported $99.7 million in expenses for combined conference and network operations during the COVID year, down from $129 million the year before.
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