Dr. Boyce Watkins: March Madness Revenue Exceeds $1 Billion, Players Get Harmed in the Process

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina  -- In case you’re not aware, the NCAA is big, really big. This professional sports league that disguises itself as being amateur is rolling in money and profitability. Much of this excess is driven by the fact that their competitors, the NFL, NBA and Major League baseball, have one line item in their budgets that the NCAA does not have: The cost of compensating their players.

For the first time ever, ad revenue from March Madness has crossed the $1 billion dollar mark. According to Kantar Media, no other professional sports league has surpassed this number. The NFL took in in a “measly” $976 million and the NBA was even more embarrassing at $537 million. Oh, Major League Baseball was barely worth mentioning, at $354 million.

Now considering that the league with the lowest post-season revenue has players making as much as $30 million dollars per year, you can only imagine how much the mother of a college athlete might benefit if her child were able to negotiate his fair market value.

Even more interesting is the way that the NCAA has played with our heads. They market their improved graduation rates as if that’s fair compensation to a player whose siblings are still living in the projects. I’m sure that a player’s hungry relatives will be glad to hear that a $3 million dollar salary has been traded in for a nice degree in General Studies that could get the player an assistant manager’s job at Applebee’s.

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Dr. Boyce Watkins is a faculty affiliate at the College Sport Research Institute at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.