The Pac-12’s last federal tax filing from its prior existence offers myriad clues to its demise. From plunging revenue and gaudy executive pay to fiscal mismanagement and immense facility costs, the document is tantamount to an autopsy report.

Obtained by the Hotline, it reflects the conference’s finances for the 2023-24 fiscal year, when 10 schools were making departure plans and two, Washington State and Oregon State, were fighting for survival.

There’s plenty to address, so let’s start with the big numbers.

Conference and campus revenue

— The Pac-12 reported $566.6 million in revenue during FY2024 and $543.4 million in expenses. The revenue figure represents a 6.2 percent year-over-year decrease attributable, in part, to the Rose Bowl contract.

One out of every three years, the Granddaddy hosts a College Football Playoff semifinal matchup, resulting in a lower payout to the Pac-12. The conference reported $121 million in postseason bowl revenue, down from $140.4 million the previous year, when the Rose Bowl was not a CFP host.

— The conference distributed approximately $30.1 million to each of the 10 departed schools and $46.6 million to both Washington State and Oregon State, for a total of $394.7 million.

As part of the negotiated settlement over control of the conference that played out in the fall of 2023, the outbound schools agreed to have $5 million in distributions withheld in FY2024 and to make a $1.5 million “supplemental  contribution” to the conference — a total of $6.5 million for each of the 10.

WSU and OSU chose to take $10 million (each) out of the $65 million pot for their FY2024 distributions and apply the amount to operations, according to the conference.

The math is fairly simple: Remove $10 million from the amount sent to Pullman and Corvallis, and the result is the distribution figure, roughly $36.6 million, that would have been sent to all 12 schools without the settlement.

Then remove the $6.5 million withheld from the departing schools, and the end result is the $30.1 million (approx) that each of the 10 received.

This contributed to fiscal pressures for the Pac-12’s collection of public universities, which booked a $110 million budget shortfall in FY2024 based on statements of revenues and expenses reported to the NCAA earlier this year.

For context, the Big Ten distributed $63.2 million to its longstanding schools in FY2024, according to USA Today, while the SEC spun off $52.5 million to its ongoing members. The ACC payouts ranged from $43.1 million to $46.4 million, and the Big 12 distributions were as low as $37.8 million and as high as $42.1 million for the longstanding schools.

Put another way: The Pac-12’s departed schools were playing from behind financially upon entering their new conferences last summer.

Additionally, the Pac-12 finished FY2024 with $63 million in cash, $67.5 million in net assets and $60.5 million in total liabilities.

It reported $11.8 million in legal expenses, up from $6.7 million the previous year..

Executive compensation

— Former commissioner George Kliavkoff received $3.7 million in total compensation.

Because IRS reporting rules track individual pay on a calendar-year basis, Kliavkoff’s listed salary was for the 2023 calendar year, when he steered the conference into the abyss but remained in charge.

His resignation came in early 2024, meaning the payments related to his buyout agreement with the conference will be reflected in the FY2025 tax filings disclosed next spring.

Kliavkoff’s predecessor, Larry Scott, who stepped down in 2021, did not receive any compensation in the 2023 calendar year. His $1.8 million relocation loan, which was on the books for more than a decade, was repaid last summer.

Combine the salaries paid to Scott and Kliavkoff over 15 years, and the commissioners took home approximately $60 million, based on a Hotline examination of Pac-12 tax filings from 2013-24 and using USA Today reports for 2010-12.

— The tax filings also show the Pac-12 paid 10 current or former executives at least $400,000 in compensation during the 2023 calendar year, including the heads of sales, content, engineering, strategy and communications. (Several of them received bonuses.)

That’s a decrease from 2022, when 13 executives (current or former) earned at least $400,000.

Current commissioner Teresa Gould received $544,000 in compensation in 2023, when she was Kliavkoff’s deputy. Her salary as commissioner will be reflected in the tax filings made public next spring.

Pac-12 Networks revenue

— The conference’s wholly owned media company reported $80 million in revenue in FY2024, its last year of existence. It booked $94 million in expenses.

The revenue total represents a 32 percent decrease from the $117 million generated just two years earlier, in FY2022.

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A central reason for the multi-year plunge: the Comcast fiasco, in which the distributor overpaid the Pac-12 Networks over the course of a decade.

Once Comcast discovered the mistake through an internal auditing process, in the summer of 2022, it began recouping the money by withholding payments to the Pac-12. (Conference executives were aware of the overpayments but allowed them to continue.)

The Comcast withholdings help explain the $37 million drop in revenue, over two years,  reported by the Pac-12 Networks.

(As a result of the overpayment scandal, the Pac-12 has been forced to refile for prior years with amended documents.)

Other reasons for the revenue drop include cord-cutting, which impacts subscriptions, and a decrease in sponsorships and ad sales related to uncertainty about the conference’s future.

Relocation costs

— The Pac-12 spent $25.8 million on independent contractors for “Production Studio Buildout” in the 2023 calendar year, as it vacated the downtown San Francisco office and moved its media production unit to the East Bay city of San Ramon. This comes on top of $4.2 million spent on the same project in 2022. The two-year total is $30 million.

(The 42,000-square-foot facility in San Ramon opened in the summer of 2023 and houses Pac-12 Enterprises, the production arm of what was the Pac-12 Networks. The Enterprises unit produced WSU and OSU football games for The CW last fall, plus additional events, and is expected to have a significant role starting in the summer of 2026, when at least six new schools join the conference.)

Three companies are listed as contractors: Advanced Systems Group ($12.5 million) BCCI Construction ($11 million) and STN Incorporated ($2.3 million).

The $30 million in relocation expenses are in addition to approximately $75 million the Pac-12 paid in rent over the course of its 11-year stay on Third Street.

As clues to destruction go, those are big ones.

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