GP247 Wire · Oct 1, 2026

Division I revenue sharing totaled $1.77 billion in its first year, College Sports Commission reports

The College Sports Commission has published figures from the inaugural year of revenue sharing under the House Settlement, covering the 2025-26 academic year. Nearly 35,000 student-athletes across 307 schools, 33 conferences, and 45 sports received a portion of the funds, with schools permitted to distribute up to $20.5 million each at their own discretion. The CSC's payment system recorded roughly $1.98 billion in total entries, broken down into approximately $1.77 billion in direct revenue-sharing payments, $42 million in Alston Awards, and $163 million in new or incremental scholarship spending. Sixty-eight of the 319 participating schools reached or came within five percent of the per-school cap, which rises to $21.58 million for 2026-27.

The implementation of the House Settlement has resulted in $1.8 billion in direct payments from schools to student-athletes across college athletics, on top of billions in scholarship benefits.

From Business of College Sports

Why it matters

For service providers: Athlete representation professionals can use these aggregate figures to counsel clients on market-rate expectations heading into the 2026-27 cycle.

For brands: Brands and sponsors investing in college athletics gain a clearer picture of the overall financial scale of athlete compensation under the new model.

For coaches: Coaches and athletic departments can benchmark their school's distributions against the 307 schools that paid out funds and the 68 that approached the cap.

For athletes: College athletes can now see how the first year of revenue sharing played out nationally and what the higher cap means for potential earnings in 2026-27.

For collectives: Collectives and compliance staff should note the separate accounting for Alston Awards and incremental scholarship spending within the CSC's payment system.

Read the full story at Business of College Sports

Sources

GP247 Wire summarizes reporting from the outlets above in our own words and links to the original. Every entry is reviewed by the Goalpost 247 team before it's published.