College-reform bill could generate extra billions by allowing conferences to pool their TV rights

Democratic senators introduced a bill Monday that would rewrite a 1961 law prohibiting college sports conferences from banding together to sell their media rights. It’s a move they say is designed to protect athletes, Olympics sports and smaller leagues that could be getting priced out of the increasingly expensive business of name, image and likeness deals.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., joined with Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., in backing the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act, a bill that gives lawmakers an alternative to a bill on the House side that has yet to come up for a floor vote.

“We take a broader approach of: How do we solve the fundamental problem of implementing NIL rights, but also keeping revenue for women’s and Olympic sports and an environment where everyone feels like they can compete?” Cantwell said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And we’re maximizing for consumers and the public the amount of content available.”

Conferences currently sell their media rights separately, with the Big Ten, for instance, distributing around $958 million to its schools from the proceeds while the Big 12 number is at around $558 million — a 52.7% difference. All conferences are part of the $7.8 billion ESPN deal for the College Football Playoff, though the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference get more money from it.

Cantwell has previously said she wants to prevent college sports from turning into a “Power 2,” featuring those leagues, with everyone else contending for scraps.

Uunder terms of the landmark House antitrust settlement, schools as of July 1 are allowed to share up to 22% of their revenues — or around $20.5 million — from TV and other proceeds to pay players for their NIL during this school year.

It has left some in the non-“Power 2” conferences wondering how they can draw top talent in football and basketball — the main revenue drivers — while maintaining smaller sports that form the pipeline for the teams America sends to the Olympics.

The Democratic proposal, which would offer schools the same antitrust protection it does for the NFL and other pro leagues regarding their TV rights, is what billionaire Texas Tech regents chair Cody Campbell has proposed, going as far as running 30-second TV ads devoted to the topic on college football broadcasts.

“I think he thinks this is a way to even out the resources among all schools so that we can still have ‘Any Given Saturday’” in college football, Cantwell said.

Investors have floated ideas of super leagues, which would presumably involve pooling all the major-conference TV rights, estimating it could drive up to a $15 billion increase in revenue.

Cantwell positions her bill as an alternative to the SCORE Act, which started with momentum but has recently stalled on the House side despite support from the NCAA.

Three key elements to that bill included provisions granting the NCAA limited antitrust protection — especially in the area of preventing lawsuits over eligibility — prohibiting athletes from becoming employees of their schools and pre-empting state laws with a larger federal law.

Cantwell’s bill keeps the pre-emption idea but does not include the other two.

“Those closest to college sports … have consistently called on Congress to take action to address the actual threats facing collegiate athletics,” NCAA senior vice president Tim Buckley said. “This includes protecting student-athletes from being forced to become employees, and ensuring academic standards and other commonsense rules can be applied consistently.”

Cantwell’s bill also offers strengthened protections for athletes from losing scholarships or health care. It would limit the number of times an athlete could transfer schools to two. It would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general authority to go after parties who violate rules written to oversee third-party collectives that now fund and oversee many of the NIL deals.

The bill calls for football and basketball games to not be behind a paywall in local markets, a provision similar to how the NFL operates and that National Association of Broadcasters president Curtis LeGeyt said would strengthen “the unique connection between universities, their communities and the student-athletes who inspire them.”

The bill also calls on schools to use extra revenue generated from the new pooled media rights to maintain scholarships and roster spots for Olympic and women’s sports at the same or greater levels than they were in 2023-24.

“We’re trying to be creative in how we can help some of these non-revenue sports grow in the future,” Cantwell said.

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