UNC adjusts default revenue-sharing formula, favoring men’s basketball; women’s basketball has $1M payroll

By R.L. Bynum

North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham laid out on Friday how the Tar Heels will distribute their revenue-sharing pool among four sports, including doling out a larger slice to men’s basketball than the standard split, and creating a women’s basketball payroll of over $1 million.

In an interview on the “Carolina Insider” podcast, Cunningham explained that, under the settlement in the Grant House v. NCAA case, schools have been allowed since July 1 to share up to 22% of their commercial activity revenue with athletes.

Cunningham said that it equates to $20.5 million in revenue for every Division I school to share with athletes.

“You can do that anywhere you’d like, or you don’t have to. It’s just permissive,” Cunningham said in the interview.

Cunningham noted that many schools are following the settlement’s default split of 75% to football, 15% to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball and 5% to all other sports.

UNC took a different approach.

“When I looked at how we generate commercial activity, that’s not the way ours is broken down,” said Cunningham, explaining that UNC is allocating roughly 65% to football and 35% to men’s basketball. Cunningham says that leaves some for baseball and women’s basketball, while admitting that those first two numbers add up to 100.

“I thought the fairest thing to do was give the revenue sharing to those sports that had generated it,” Cunningham said. “We are continuing to sponsor 28 teams, and we’re continuing to offer championship experiences, but for the commercial activity, I thought it was best to give it to those that generated [revenue].”

For the upcoming school year, UNC will allocate $13 million to football, $7 million to men’s basketball, and $250,000 each to baseball and women’s basketball. That last figure, Cunningham admitted, is higher than the women’s program’s direct commercial contribution.

“Women’s basketball actually was more than they really earned,” Cunningham said, adding that Coach Courtney Banghart has “done an incredible job of fundraising. Her payroll, if you will, is over a million dollars this year for the women’s basketball team. So that’s very competitive with some of the top programs in the country.”

Cunningham said the decision reflected both fairness and competitiveness.

“We tried to match who generated the money, their team got it,” Cunningham said, “and we tried to match what is our competition and what are they?”

Cunningham said that the allocations will be revisited after the upcoming school year, but Cunningham emphasized that UNC’s model is designed to reward programs that generate commercial activity while still supporting others through scholarships and educational benefits.

You can listen to the entire interview here, starting at 30:00.