Big Ten Earned $69.4M from 2026 NCAA Tournament, How Much Did Each Top Conference Make?

The Big Ten will receive the highest March Madness payout in the NCAA after Michigan and UCLA won the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments, respectively.

The NCAA will send almost $70 million to the conference starting next April as part of its annual distributions, according to the AP's Eric Olson.

These distributions are based on how many programs each conference sends to the NCAA Tournament and how far those teams go.

Here's how the minimum NCAA distributions are estimated to shake out after the 2026 tournaments, as reported by Olson.

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• Big Ten: $69.4 million
• SEC: $56.2 million
• Big 12: $42.9 million
• ACC: $34.2 million
• Big East: $22.2 million

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Those distributions reportedly come in large part from the men's side of March Madness.

For example, the Big Ten will receive at least $63 million from the men's tournament and $6.4 million from the women's, per Olson.

NCAA tournament payouts are determined by "units." On the men's side, there were 135 units representing each game that could be played in the 68-team field for the 2026 tournament.

The Big Ten sent nine teams to the men's tournament and left with 30 units, followed by the SEC (24 units), Big 12 (19 units), ACC (14 units) and Big East (10 units), per Sportico's Eben Novy-Williams and Lev Akabas.

The NCAA began offering a similar unit system for the women's tournament in 2025, although the differing size of the broadcast deals for both tournaments meant a smaller pool of money was involved.

The women's pool this spring was also led by the Big Ten, which earned 12 bids and 32 units to pace the SEC (29 units) and ACC (24 units).

Each unit from the men's tournament is worth $350,000 in the first year of payment, which is scheduled to start in 2027 and increase annually for six years for an estimated total of $2.1 million, per Olson.

The units from the women's tournament are worth an estimated $75,000 this year, and will be worth an estimated total of $201,000 when paid out over three years, Olson reported.

The money collected from these units goes to each conference, which then decides how the funds are distributed between the conference as a whole and individual teams. Some conferences use incentive-based distribution systems dependent on programs' postseason performances.