Gap in UConn budget
UConn athletics run a $43.5M budget deficit for the fiscal year.
UConn’s athletic department ran a $43.5 million budget deficit for the 2020 fiscal year, according to a financial statement reported to the NCAA, up slightly from 2019 and again larger than most Division I schools.
The year-over-year increase in UConn’s deficit appears to stem largely from the cancellation of the men’s American Athletic Conference tournament and both men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments last spring, as well as an increase in salaries for football and men’s basketball coaches.
“UConn Athletics continues its work toward financial self-sufficiency, staying the course despite revenue and expense challenges posed to its programs and the University as a whole by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the university said in a statement. “It also continues to provide top-quality educational and athletic opportunities to its student-athletes
and an exciting, uniting experience for alumni and Husky fans worldwide.”
According to an athletic department spokesperson, last year’s payment toward UConn’s $17 million AAC exit fee is not reflected in the financial statement, which accounts for the period between July 2019 and June 2020, nor are pandemic-related losses from this fall and winter. The financial statement also does not include $26.4 million in donations and pledges the athletic department secured in the 2020 fiscal year, the second-highest amount raised in athletics history.
UConn’s reported deficit grew despite a significant increase in men’s and women’s basketball ticket sales, which likely reflected enthusiasm around those programs as well as the scheduling of high-profile nonconference home games.
The deficit, which is offset each year by student fees and a university subsidy, is one of the largest in college sports, having reached a level that a 2017 report from the school’s senate budgetary committee called “unsustainable.”
The athletic department has pledged to become more self-sufficient, and cut four varsity sports this past summer in an effort to reduce costs. Though UConn paid millions in fees to leave the AAC last summer, school officials said they expect the jump to the Big East to financially benefit the athletic department in the long run, especially once the pandemic is over.
UConn officials have said they hoped to shrink the athletic department’s deficit beginning in 2021 — a goal complicated by the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, which has prevented fans from attending games during the current school year.
Already, the pandemic has had an effect, causing the cancelation of lucrative postseason tournaments. UConn men’s basketball reported a nearly 70 percent loss in conference distributions, largely because the AAC Tournament was not completed, while both men’s and women’s teams took home $0 in NCAA distributions, as compared to $200,000 for the men and just more than $500,000 for the women the year prior.
Because of this, all three major sports — men’s and women’s basketball as well as football — experienced revenue declines from 2019, even as ticket sales increased for men’s basketball (by about 31 percent) and for women’s basketball (19 percent). Men’s basketball revenue dropped from $6 million to $5 million, women’s basketball from $4.5 million to $4 million and football from $3.3 million to $2.3 million.
Those programs finished with operating expenses of $17.2 million for football (up from $16.6 million), $8.2 million for women’s basketball (up from $8.0 million) and $11.2 million for men’s basketball (up from $9.9 million). Contractual obligations led to a $1.2 million increase in football salaries and $1.4 million increase for those in men’s basketball.
Across the 2020 fiscal year, UConn reported $78.8 million in operating expenses, downfrom$80.8 million from 2019. Amid the cancelation of winter and spring sports and a prolonged NCAA recruiting dead period, the program spent nearly $2 million less on recruiting and team travel than in 2019.
About 15 percent, or $6.5 million, of the university’s $43 million subsidy to athletics came from student fees.
UConn’s decision to cut four varsity sports — women’s rowing, men’s tennis, men’s swimming and diving and men’s cross country — is not reflected in this year’s financial report, which takes into account only expenses and revenues through June 30, 2020. Though they haven’t competed to date this year, those four programs weren’t expected to be phased out until after the 202021 season, with all affected athletes allowed to remain on scholarship until they graduate.
The athletic department has said it would also institute additional cuts, including a 15 percent reduction in operating expenses, reduced scholarships and a 15 percent pay reduction for athletics director David Benedict. The school has also said it will change how scholarships are calculated, which will not save money but will make its deficit appear smaller.
The department has been instructed to reduce its university subsidy by 25 percent, to roughly $30 million, by 2023.
Though the athletic department’s deficit remains one of the highest in the nation, the school is not necessarily losing $43 million on sports. Sports economists note that the “expenses” side of a school’s ledger typically counts each scholarship as costing the full rate of tuition, even though money doesn’t actually change hands when athletes attend school for free. Additionally, UConn pays more than $3.5 million in rent each year to the publicly run Capital Region Development Authority, in what essentially amounts to a budget transfer.
UConn also draws benefit from athletics through admissions, school spirit and alumni engagement.
A 2019 Courant analysis found that applications to the school spike following years when the men’s and women’s basketball programs have had successful seasons.