Revenue down for UConn sports
Money generated by athletic department covered less than half of expenses in 2018
Revenue generated by UConn’s athletic department covered less than half of the department’s expenses during the 2018 fiscal year, according to the school’s annual NCAA financial statement.
The athletic department incurred $80,905,645 in expenses in 2018, down slightly from 2017, while generating $40,418,969 in revenue, also down from 2017. The school’s sports programs were once again heavily subsidized by the university, receiving more than $8.5 million in student fees and more than $30 million in additional institutional support.
“The long-term goal is obviously to move athletics closer to financial self-sufficiency,” UConn spokes- woman Stephanie Reitz said in an email, noting that as recently as 2013, the athletic department did not require a significant subsidy. “In recent years, declining conference and media licensing revenue, along with rising costs, have created the current deficit. It is not sustainable and the Division of Athletics is continually working to identify savings and drive up revenue in order to help close this gap.”
UConn’s jump from the Big East to the American Athletic Confer-
ence in 2013, amid widespread conference realignment, cost the athletic department significant money in media rights and bowl payouts.
Reitz said that although UConn’s sports teams lose money, they “play an important role in the life of the university and the state.”
Though the vast majority of Division I athletic departments operate at a loss, UConn’s deficit has become particularly extreme.
A USA Today analysis of data from 2016-17 found the school’s athletic department received the highest university subsidy (about $42 million) of any Division I public institution and that its allocation as a percentage of total reported revenue ( just under 51 percent) was higher than that of any other public school in one of college sports’ six biggest conferences.
The biggest individual team culprit of the UConn athletic department’s 2018 deficit was the school’s football program, which lost $8.7 million. Additionally, men’s basketball lost about $5 million, women’s basketball lost about $3.1 million and the rest of the school’s sports lost about $22.3 million among them.
UConn spent $17 million in coaches’ salaries, $16.9 million in athletic scholarships, $14.4 million in support staff and administrative compensation and $7.3 million in team travel.
The athletic department’s largest source of income in 2018 (aside from university support) was royalties, licensing, advertising and sponsorships, which totaled $14.1 million. Ticket sale revenue dropped 7.5 percent from 2017, to $9.1 million.
UConn has been hurt in recent years by the slipping performance of its football and men’s basketball programs, whose struggles have affected attendance and therefore revenue.
Football saw a 28 percent decrease in ticket sale revenue last year, from $3.3 million in 2017 to $2.4 million in 2018, while men’s basketball during the 2017-18 season had its lowest attendance numbers in 30 years, leading to a reduction in revenue generated by the team.
UConn’s women’s basketball program saw an increase in revenue of about $1.2 million, thanks, in part, to improved attendance. As a result, the program operated at less of a deficit in 2018 than it did in 2017.
The football program’s deficit was also considerably smaller in 2018 than in 2017, but that difference owed mostly to the fact the school paid out over $5 million in severance to football coaches (led by Bob Diaco) in 2017.
In 2017, UConn’s athletic department overall incurred more than $83 million in expenses while generating about $41 million in revenues.
As of February, Storrs-based undergraduates paid a $1,914 annual fee to the university, of which $434 went toward athletics.