Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-512_gfbh.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

$10,000 for students to attend graduate school after their 
athletic eligibility expires.  Id., at 1074.  Finally, the NCAA
allows  schools  to  fund  travel  for  student-athletes’  family 
members to attend “certain events.”  Id., at 1069. 

Over the decades, the NCAA has become a sprawling en-
terprise.  Its  membership  comprises  about  1,100  colleges 
and  universities,  organized  into  three  divisions.  Id.,  at 
1063.  Division I teams are often the most popular and at-
tract the most money and the most talented athletes.  Cur-
rently,  Division  I  includes  roughly  350  schools  divided 
across 32 conferences.  See ibid.  Within Division I, the most 
popular sports are basketball and football.  The NCAA di-
vides Division I football into the Football Bowl Subdivision 
(FBS) and the Football Championship Subdivision, with the 
FBS generally featuring the best teams.  Ibid.  The 32 con-
ferences in Division I function similarly to the NCAA itself,
but on a smaller scale.  They “can and do enact their own 
rules.”  Id., at 1090. 

At the center of this thicket of associations and rules sits 
a  massive  business.  The  NCAA’s  current  broadcast  con-
tract  for  the  March  Madness  basketball  tournament  is 
worth $1.1 billion annually.  See id., at 1077, n. 20.  Its tel-
evision  deal  for  the  FBS  conference’s  College  Football 
Playoff is worth approximately $470 million per year.  See 
id., at 1063; Bachman, ESPN Strikes Deal for College Foot-
ball  Playoff,  Wall  Street  Journal,  Nov.  21,  2012.    Beyond
these sums, the Division I conferences earn substantial rev-
enue from regular-season games.  For example, the South-
eastern Conference (SEC) “made more than $409 million in
revenues  from  television  contracts  alone  in  2017,  with  its 
total  conference  revenues  exceeding  $650  million  that 
year.”  D.  Ct.  Op.,  at  1063.  All  these  amounts  have  “in-
creased consistently over the years.”  Ibid. 

Those  who  run  this  enterprise  profit  in  a  different  way 
than  the  student-athletes  whose  activities  they  oversee.
The  president  of  the  NCAA  earns  nearly  $4  million  per