ACC stands to make more than $30 million from NCAA tournament run
— -- The ACC's stellar run in the 2016 NCAA tournament, which has resulted in a 12-1 record and six of its teams making the Sweet 16, will be worth more than $30 million to the conference.
The money comes from the basketball fund, a pool set aside by the NCAA since 1991 to reward conferences for their teams' advancing in the tournament.
Each game played in this year's tournament is worth $265,791. That money is paid out in each of the next six years (2017-22), with the number for each game, or unit, growing each year of the payout. When multiplied times six, the total worth of a game played in this year's tournament will be at least $1.59 million.
Duke, Virginia, North Carolina, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Miami all advanced to the Sweet 16. The only ACC loss belonged to Pittsburgh, which fell 47-43 to Wisconsin on Friday.
That means the ACC has 13 units from 13 games played and is guaranteed another six units from Sweet 16 games. Nineteen units will add up to more than $30.3 million over the six-year payout.
Because no ACC team will face a conference foe in the Sweet 16, it's possible they could all advance to the Elite Eight.
Last year, the ACC became the first conference to guarantee itself more than $30 million in a single tournament. With a unit earned for every game but the title game, the conference earned a total of 21 units worth more than $32.8 million.
The record for the most units earned by a conference in an NCAA tournament was 24 by the Big East in 2009. That year, five Big East teams made the Sweet 16, four made the Elite Eight and two made the Final Four.
ACC teams split the money received from the fund equally among all schools, including the member schools that didn't make the tournament.
The basketball fund was devised to help redistribute the money brought in by television deals. The latest deal with CBS and Turner is a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract that will pay the NCAA a $740 million fee this year.
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