The NCAA and its five power conferences voted to approve terms of a multibillion-dollar settlement to resolve three antitrust lawsuits, paving the way for schools to pay athletes in what would mark a seismic change to the college sports business model.
The settlement includes payments of more than $2.75 billion from the NCAA to former Division I athletes, plus a future revenue-sharing model between power-conference schools and athletes, according to Hagens Berman and Winston & Strawn LLP, the law firms representing the plaintiffs in the three cases, House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.
The revenue sharing would be an optional model for power-conference programs, potentially as soon as next year, in which 22 percent of those schools’ average annual revenue — projected to be more than $20 million per school — would be distributable directly to athletes.
The damages, made available to D-I athletes dating back to 2016 as back-pay for lost name, image and likeness (NIL) earning opportunities, would be paid out over 10 years via a combination of NCAA reserve funds and reductions in future revenue distributions to conferences.
The next step will be submitting the settlement to Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for preliminary approval, expected to happen within 30-45 days. If finalized, a process that will take several months, the settlement would be the next and most significant overhaul to the long-standing framework of amateurism in college sports...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5510354/2024/05/23/house-v-ncaa-settlement-votes/.
To the extent that these developments squeeze revenue left to the various schools, there could be implications for the Regents' recent decision regarding the Berkeley tax on UCLA. As we have been saying about the state budget situation, there's only so much juice in the lemon. Were the Regents aware that this decision was coming when they enacted the tax?
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