COVID-19 initially appeared to present an existential threat to college athletic department bottom lines, with schools anticipating tens of millions—and in some cases over $100 million—in revenue shortfalls during the early months of the pandemic.
But the first look at new financial data from this past fiscal year—from July 2020 to June 2021—paints a less dire picture than expected.
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Throughout the brunt of the pandemic, salary reductions were shouldered primarily by support staffers and administrators, not high-priced coaches. With travel restrictions in place, recruiting expenses dipped substantially. One area did produce significant cost overruns: medical and healthcare expenses, with most schools seeing their bills double as COVID testing, treatment and prevention took center stage.
At the vast majority of FBS institutions, football ticket sales dropped precipitously from the previous season, which went untouched by COVID. At Nebraska, for example, this revenue dropped 99%—from $31.4 million for 2019-20 to a mere $302,000 in 2020-21. Universities responded by slashing athletic department budgets, as game cancellations and cost-cutting measures like furloughs, layoffs and reductions in travel expenditures helped athletic departments cover some shortfalls.
These findings come from the most recent set of annual revenue and expense reports that schools are required to submit to the NCAA every January. The latest batch, for the 2021 fiscal year, is the first to capture a full academic year (and football season) disrupted by COVID.
Through public records requests, Sportico has already obtained those reports from dozens of public Football Bowl Subdivision schools, which together provide a detailed, national look at how the pandemic affected athletic departments across the NCAA’s top…
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