The Big Ten finally broke through on the football field in January, as Michigan won the national title to end a three-year run by the SEC and claim the first championship for its conference in nine years.
And on the balance sheets, the conference is also tops in the nation.
The Big Ten took in $880 million in revenue in the fiscal year 2023, according to tax returns obtained by Sportico.
That number edged out the $853 million from the SEC to give the Big Ten the title of college sports’ richest conference.
The Big Ten has now held that distinction in five of the last six years; the SEC became the first conference to top $800 million in 2021.
The Big Ten saw its revenue surge by $36 million year over year. It’s now poised to see an even bigger jump; the conference’s new $7 billion television deal kicked in immediately after fiscal year 2023 ended, meaning it could soon become the first billion-dollar college football conference.
Each Big Ten member school received around $60 million of that revenue in distributions.
The highest-paid individual from the conference in 2023 was former commissioner Jim Delany, who received $5.8 million in incentive and deferred compensation more than two years after he retired from the league.
