ACC, Pac-12 Spent Record Amounts on Lawyers in FY24
The Atlantic Coast Conference spent $12.3 million on attorneys fees in fiscal year 2024, while the Pac-12 spent $11.8 million—believed to be the highest and second-highest legal expenditures ever recorded by college conferences in a 12-month span.
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The Pac-12’s unraveling accelerated after USC and UCLA announced their plans to defect to the Big Ten in 2022, leading to eight more of the Pac-12’s member schools announcing their departures to the Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 the following year. By Aug. 1, 2024, only
Oregon State and
Washington State remained. As part of a
negotiated settlement finalized in early 2024, the departing schools agreed to forfeit a combined $65 million in revenue distributions—$6.5 million per school—to resolve disputes over governance and financial control.
The tax returns show that, through FY24, Oregon State and Washington State took only about a third of the settlement in distributions, which worked out to about $46.5 million to each school. The departing schools, by contrast, received slightly more than $30 million apiece, just about $3 million less than they received in the fiscal year 2023.
Leadership turnover added yet another layer to the Pac-12’s unraveling. Former commissioner
George Kliavkoff, who left in February 2024 amid mounting scrutiny, earned $3.63 million in total compensation for the 2023 calendar year—slightly down from $3.98 million the year prior.
In total, the conference spent $57.3 million on salaries, compensation and employee benefits in FY24—up significantly from $40.3 million the previous fiscal year. The sharp increase was largely due to a sweeping organizational overhaul, which included retention bonuses and severance payouts. The conference staff shrank from roughly 190 employees—including those at the now-defunct Pac-12 Networks—to around 30.
Sure enough, not everyone left happily.
Throughout FY24, the conference defended itself against a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former Pac-12 Network president Mark Shuken and CFO Brent Willman, who were dismissed in early 2023 over the Comcast overpayment scandal. According to reports, the conference had long been aware of the discrepancy, which only came to light through a Comcast audit.
Shuken and Willman claimed they were unfairly scapegoated for a problem they had flagged to former commissioner Larry Scott. They filed suit in April 2023 in California state court, and the parties reached a settlement in principle by May 2024 for undisclosed terms. Shuken received $201,378 in 2023 compensation, according to the Pac-12’s tax filing.
In September 2023, Washington State and Oregon State filed for a
temporary restraining order in Whitman County (Wash.) Superior Court against the conference to preserve the league and its control of assets. The move came after Kliavkoff scheduled a board meeting that the two schools argued would “doom the Pac-12’s ability to survive past 2024.” In December, the parties announced they had reached a settlement, which was finalized in March 2024.
Aside from lawyers, a significant portion of the league’s independent contracting expenses in FY24 stemmed from the development of the conference’s new production facility in San Ramon, Calif. The Pac-12 reported spending $25 million across three firms for construction work related to the project. The Pac-12 Network officially shut down in June 2024.
After abandoning its pricey (and controversial) downtown San Francisco office digs, the conference was able to cut its occupancy expenditures by more than 60%—from $9.8 million in FY23 to just $3.86 million in FY24.
The conference’s primary sources of revenue—$381.5 million in television rights fees, $120 million from post-season bowls and $11 million in advertising—all were slightly down from the previous fiscal year.
The Pac-12 also faced challenges in collecting payments. It reported a $4.6 million expense under the line item “provision for doubtful,” which, according to the league spokesperson, represented accounts receivable that remained unpaid as of the end of June 2024.
One debt the conference
did manage to recover was a $1.86 million interest-free home loan extended to Scott, Kliavkoff’s predecessor, when he was hired in 2009.
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2025/pac-12-tax-return-fy24-legal-fees-1234852692/
