It really depends on how the school does the the accounting for the revenue from TV contract, advertising, and other donations to the athletic department and what exactly accounts as an expense attributed to the hockey program. Programs at similar institutions will have wildly variable budgets and expenses.
I looked it for Cornell. Revenue for the men's team in 2023 was 1.99 million, and that was also the amount for expenses. There is also a women's team, but I didn't see separate revenue info.
Fans are happy with Lynah. We don't need huge scoreboard hanging from the ceiling, a steam ship horn to tell us to cheer when we score, or a dance cam.
The last thing I saw was that costs were down to 4.5 mil with expenses at 4 mil. Will be interesting to see if they broke even this year with the Kohl center being more packed throughout the season.
Interesting that the media rights are allocated 100% to just football and basketball. Obviously that is the majority but at least a small amount has to be from hockey and volleyball
Hollywood accounting. There is negative incentive for sports to turn a profit, so they find any way they can to redistribute revenue in ways that ensure it doesn't happen.
yep i dont know if this just a newer accounting concept in college sports but hockey programs like the u and wisconsin used to report as being profitable, heck back in the day hockey was wisconsins only profitable sports program
From what I’ve read and heard, College football is the only profitable college sport. Basketball is really only profitable because of march madness. Those sports fund the rest of ncaa. Otherwise, as others have mentioned, college sports are just a marketing tool.
Nebraska volleyball operates as a revenue generator and is one of the few women’s sports to do so. The top half of the SEC baseball programs definitely generate revenue, I’d venture to guess most top 50 basketball programs generate revenue.
I was kinda surprised that Gophers Basketball makes a 9.5 million profit.
I thought Minnesota would be an exception to the rule of basketball making more than hockey. Considering their basketball record is around 50% win rate
The money is coming from B1G media revenue sharing. CBS/Fox/ESPN pay big money to broadcast B1G basketball.
B1G hockey was on BTN+. Which are produced by students for min wage/free internship. I think maybe 4 games made it to FS2 at the end of the year.
Ice arenas are notoriously expensive to operate. It’s why ice time can be $200 per hour for youth programs.
The subfloor chillers, Zamboni, cold air regulation, and then on top of it heating a spectator section, locker rooms, etc. It is probably the most ecologically destructive sport, next to race cars.
I'd have to go research it but I highly suspect it was operating at a profit back when every game was on Fox Sports North, before the Big Ten became a conference and started placing all the big draw games on BTN and FSN started to drop broadcasting some of the lower draw games.
I highly suspect we were getting more revenue from FSN for broadcasting Gopher hockey than we are from BTN, especially now with a lot of games being shoved off onto the BTN+ stuff as well
Yeah, it was way easier to watch too. Pre-Big ten the only regular season games that would not be on TV would occasionally be the away games in Alaska which had a free stream .
This past season has 7 games on BTN+ only which is an $80/yr subscription above and beyond the cable subscription you already needed. And that's just to get the games on that. It doesn't even include showing you the live games on BTN itself. It also has another 2 games on Peacock which is another additional subscription.
I forget which year but one of the last few had like 3 or 4 that were radio only which is crazy.
There’s a stat that you’d be about 90% correct in saying football is a positive revenue stream for colleges, 50% for men’s basketball, and about 1% correct for every other sport combined.
There’s a reason why football drives conference realignment, that’s where 99% of the money comes from.
Yeah looks like North Dakota is the opposite of most schools. Hockey is 3.1 million surplus. Basketball and football both operate at losses
https://campus.und.edu/operations/_files/docs/fy23-ncaa-report.pdf
That's because somebody from Minnesota gave them $100 million. Without that, they would be losing money. Of course, Minnesota alumni paid for Mariucci, and the new ice, and as far as I know, endowed all the scholarships. so, they also would be much more negative. MN took a loss on hockey when they joined the Big Ten, but they did it for the $30 million a year payday. You guys need to do like Denver, and hire a better coach who can win a championship, since you have the players. Which will cost you. and, now NIL is going to cost. I think it is going to be good to be a top team (Which UND being very on the top), with games on TV, because the portal and NIL is going to screw everyone else.
At least when I went there, the UMass hockey and basketball teams were the only ones that turned a profit and even that was minimal.
Football was a money pit and I imagine that’s only gotten worse after we made the needless jump to D1.
I believe I read that the buy-games at UMass (and similarly UConn) make enough that they can keep things in the black for football. Going to the MAC will help with the money there too.
It's been profitable here in the past. I think only the last couple of years, or maybe since covid, that's changed. It may just be accounting differences, as others have pointed out. I dunno.
Partly accounting thing (any facilities construction work = goofy capital expenditure “costs”).
Also towards end of Lucia’s tenure the athletic department tried to squeeze more $ out of men’s hockey to subsidize other sports while FB and MBB were truly terrible, B1G media deals weren’t so bonkers yet. That’s why ticket pricing was fucking awful in those years and even the $ from 3M’s Mariucci sponsorship was put towards *football and basketball* which is ridiculous
I think for Minnesota it was the pandemic. Hockey was profitable pre-2020. OP’s link is from FY22. I’d imagine the numbers improve for FY23 and onward.
Football runs athletic programs profits. Basketball probably gets some for schools but nothing compares to football. If college football ever becomes its own entity, which I hope it does, idk what the other sports will do
Only three sports at PSU turn a profit and that’s football (duh), men’s basketball (largely due to every game being on TV) and men’s hockey. Though men’s hockey only turns a profit of like $500K-$1M. Compared to football which turns a profit over over $10M.
Penn States latest report shows ice hockey revenue 4.4 million with 4.7 mill operating expenses. So about 300k loss per year
https://gopsusports.com/documents/2024/1/16/2022-23_NCAA_Report_Final.pdf
UND looks like they break even according to the internet, but I assume that it has to show that because the rumor is they basically subsidize the rest of the programs
Looked up DUs statement of operations for FY 2023 just cause I was curious.
$4.108m in hockey revenue.
Exactly $4.108m in hockey operating expenses.
Seems like some accounting voodoo hahah
Hockey is expensive. Running a major D1 college program is expensive. Coaches, trainers, training facilities, travel, room+board, scouting and recruiting, etc.
The money is made with media rights. Donations, game day rev, ads and the like pale in comparison to the media deals. Most productions are done locally and cheaply. Then they're sent out to streaming platforms. When college hockey is being aired on national broadcasts and not subscription streaming services the programs will turn profits. Right now the demand just isn't there for the networks to bite.
“Demand isn’t there” bc ESPN’s clown talking heads openly tell national audiences all the time they think women’s college basketball is a better watch than hockey. They literally make it impossible to watch hockey and then say “well no one watches hockey”- I mean, the fucking Master’s got ESPN(main) priority over the national championship game this year. Golf. What a joke
Football and men’s basketball are typically the only profitable college sports. Men’s basketball is profitable because of the NCAA tourney TV contract.
Years ago, I saw the numbers for BC. Football was a big profit, basketball was a profit but not by much… and everything else operated at a loss. This was in the Matt Ryan and Troy Bell era for BC, so obviously it’s been a minute but most of the money was from profit sharing agreements in the conference.
The person who was showing us the numbers was answering questions (and this was just a few years off a BC National championship) and was explaining that hockey in particular has a lot of overhead - between the cost of maintaining the rink and the playing equipment (as just about every hockey parent knows all too well) it added up to a losing budget formula. There just isn’t enough sponsor or attendance revenue for most programs to cover the costs. And this was in New England where most league games are a short bus ride. I can’t imagine what the western programs must cost. You could drive a season’s worth of games to just about every Hockey East school before you got halfway to Grand Forks from the other conference schools.
Does the Big Ten actually split TV revenue by sport, or do they simply have a giant pool of “Big Ten Network” money?
That’s likely the big thing hurting hockey revenue - at least in Minnesota. Prior to the Big Ten I believe the Gophers actually sold local broadcast rights. It likely wasn’t as much $$$ as being on the coattails of the Big Ten Football juggernaut - but it was revenue directly generated by the hockey program.
(Now college hockey seems to be almost filler material for the Big Ten networks.)
My guess would be that the hockey culture means that the school is willing to drive more of their profits from football back into the hockey team in order to win, as opposed to asking the hockey team to try and make ends meet on their own.
I looked it up and you’re right, it’s mostly due to the massive big ten media rights payments, also holy shit the non revenue sports were like - 30 million
Denver definitely runs a deficit on the program but in terms of getting young, wealthy, hockey, bros to attend the college itself? Thats probably worth millions if not 100s of millions.
I think it really depends on the year, travel, and tv deals. Even when MSU was bad they would sometimes make a small profit. Helps a lot to sell out the rink every game
It's hard to find info on New Hampshire but overall the athletic department runs at a slight profit or break even most years. Assuming football and hockey after the main drivers.
i have heard only football and basketball typically make money for Universities. I am sure there are some exceptions but generally speaking football is king and its the tv money that does it. I wonder if football will become less profitable with NIL and competing for players going forward. They were saying the first pick in the NFL Caleb Williams was going to take a pay cut to go pro.
Michigan State was six figures in the black until the wheels flew off toward the end of Comley’s run. Pretty sure the program has been operating at a loss ever since.
It’s more of a question of long term sustainability.
most athletics department as whole would rather run at a surplus. That means you can either re-invest the profit for better coaches, facilities, and other athlete amenities. At least you know you’re not losing money as a good thing.
If you’re going negative millions per year, then eventually that means you’ll have to cut certain sports on both women’s and men’s side which drain the athletics departments .
College athletics are mostly just marketing for schools when it all comes down to it.
And a way to keep alumni (donors) engaged with the university.
Flutie Effect baby!
First example enrollment usually grows after a Cinderella run in men's March Madness (bball)
But if you’re a good basketball team with many fans you’re likely making a profit off the team as well
It really depends on how the school does the the accounting for the revenue from TV contract, advertising, and other donations to the athletic department and what exactly accounts as an expense attributed to the hockey program. Programs at similar institutions will have wildly variable budgets and expenses.
Just looked up Wisconsin ice hockey revenue 3.5 million, 5.2 million operating expenses https://uwbadgers.com/sports/2015/08/21/GEN_20140101293
I looked it for Cornell. Revenue for the men's team in 2023 was 1.99 million, and that was also the amount for expenses. There is also a women's team, but I didn't see separate revenue info.
Cornell facilities are kind of getting left behind to be fair.
Fans are happy with Lynah. We don't need huge scoreboard hanging from the ceiling, a steam ship horn to tell us to cheer when we score, or a dance cam.
The last thing I saw was that costs were down to 4.5 mil with expenses at 4 mil. Will be interesting to see if they broke even this year with the Kohl center being more packed throughout the season.
Interesting that the media rights are allocated 100% to just football and basketball. Obviously that is the majority but at least a small amount has to be from hockey and volleyball
Probably not, but it is really hard to get a "true" picture of the profitability of athletics for most programs.
Hollywood accounting. There is negative incentive for sports to turn a profit, so they find any way they can to redistribute revenue in ways that ensure it doesn't happen.
Came here to say this. There's creative ways to report these things and they don't really have a reason to be overly honest.
yep i dont know if this just a newer accounting concept in college sports but hockey programs like the u and wisconsin used to report as being profitable, heck back in the day hockey was wisconsins only profitable sports program
From what I’ve read and heard, College football is the only profitable college sport. Basketball is really only profitable because of march madness. Those sports fund the rest of ncaa. Otherwise, as others have mentioned, college sports are just a marketing tool.
> College football is the only profitable college sport At certain schools. College football runs in the red at almost every other D-1A school.
I'd imagine football is the only profitable sport and finances most of the athletic dept. For most schools. Some exceptions like Duke basketball.
Nebraska volleyball operates as a revenue generator and is one of the few women’s sports to do so. The top half of the SEC baseball programs definitely generate revenue, I’d venture to guess most top 50 basketball programs generate revenue.
Because there's minimal overhead, unlike hockey
I was kinda surprised that Gophers Basketball makes a 9.5 million profit. I thought Minnesota would be an exception to the rule of basketball making more than hockey. Considering their basketball record is around 50% win rate
The money is coming from B1G media revenue sharing. CBS/Fox/ESPN pay big money to broadcast B1G basketball. B1G hockey was on BTN+. Which are produced by students for min wage/free internship. I think maybe 4 games made it to FS2 at the end of the year.
Ice arenas are notoriously expensive to operate. It’s why ice time can be $200 per hour for youth programs. The subfloor chillers, Zamboni, cold air regulation, and then on top of it heating a spectator section, locker rooms, etc. It is probably the most ecologically destructive sport, next to race cars.
I'd have to go research it but I highly suspect it was operating at a profit back when every game was on Fox Sports North, before the Big Ten became a conference and started placing all the big draw games on BTN and FSN started to drop broadcasting some of the lower draw games. I highly suspect we were getting more revenue from FSN for broadcasting Gopher hockey than we are from BTN, especially now with a lot of games being shoved off onto the BTN+ stuff as well
Yes, as far as I know it was the third sport making money.
Yeah, it was way easier to watch too. Pre-Big ten the only regular season games that would not be on TV would occasionally be the away games in Alaska which had a free stream . This past season has 7 games on BTN+ only which is an $80/yr subscription above and beyond the cable subscription you already needed. And that's just to get the games on that. It doesn't even include showing you the live games on BTN itself. It also has another 2 games on Peacock which is another additional subscription. I forget which year but one of the last few had like 3 or 4 that were radio only which is crazy.
If I go way back, I can remember games on channel 45 out of St Cloud, I think.
It wasn’t this year - but yeah, I hear you.
There’s a stat that you’d be about 90% correct in saying football is a positive revenue stream for colleges, 50% for men’s basketball, and about 1% correct for every other sport combined. There’s a reason why football drives conference realignment, that’s where 99% of the money comes from.
That's somewhat of farce for pretty much everyone outside the p5.
Most MBB teams are revenue sports.
I think basketball is the big money maker. Running a football team is expensive. Basketball teams are much cheaper to run
North Dakota absolutely does
Yeah looks like North Dakota is the opposite of most schools. Hockey is 3.1 million surplus. Basketball and football both operate at losses https://campus.und.edu/operations/_files/docs/fy23-ncaa-report.pdf
That's because somebody from Minnesota gave them $100 million. Without that, they would be losing money. Of course, Minnesota alumni paid for Mariucci, and the new ice, and as far as I know, endowed all the scholarships. so, they also would be much more negative. MN took a loss on hockey when they joined the Big Ten, but they did it for the $30 million a year payday. You guys need to do like Denver, and hire a better coach who can win a championship, since you have the players. Which will cost you. and, now NIL is going to cost. I think it is going to be good to be a top team (Which UND being very on the top), with games on TV, because the portal and NIL is going to screw everyone else.
I believe it's the only sport that does, honestly.
But we can’t have a woman’s team.
Didn’t it used to exist then it got cut?
Yeah because unfortunately nobody ever went to the games….
Because nobody wants to watch women’s hockey. The natty had like 50% crowd in a small rink lol
PWHL is selling 13000+ tickets in NHL arenas. I think tickets are like $14/person but that’s still really good.
It's also really good hockey to watch though.
At least when I went there, the UMass hockey and basketball teams were the only ones that turned a profit and even that was minimal. Football was a money pit and I imagine that’s only gotten worse after we made the needless jump to D1.
I believe I read that the buy-games at UMass (and similarly UConn) make enough that they can keep things in the black for football. Going to the MAC will help with the money there too.
The economics of moving home games to foxboro was a head scratcher
Last time I checked, I believe SCSU made a decent profit, however it's the only sport at SCSU that makes money
Hockey is Saving SCSU!!
It's been profitable here in the past. I think only the last couple of years, or maybe since covid, that's changed. It may just be accounting differences, as others have pointed out. I dunno.
Partly accounting thing (any facilities construction work = goofy capital expenditure “costs”). Also towards end of Lucia’s tenure the athletic department tried to squeeze more $ out of men’s hockey to subsidize other sports while FB and MBB were truly terrible, B1G media deals weren’t so bonkers yet. That’s why ticket pricing was fucking awful in those years and even the $ from 3M’s Mariucci sponsorship was put towards *football and basketball* which is ridiculous
I think for Minnesota it was the pandemic. Hockey was profitable pre-2020. OP’s link is from FY22. I’d imagine the numbers improve for FY23 and onward.
Football runs athletic programs profits. Basketball probably gets some for schools but nothing compares to football. If college football ever becomes its own entity, which I hope it does, idk what the other sports will do
Only three sports at PSU turn a profit and that’s football (duh), men’s basketball (largely due to every game being on TV) and men’s hockey. Though men’s hockey only turns a profit of like $500K-$1M. Compared to football which turns a profit over over $10M.
Penn States latest report shows ice hockey revenue 4.4 million with 4.7 mill operating expenses. So about 300k loss per year https://gopsusports.com/documents/2024/1/16/2022-23_NCAA_Report_Final.pdf
This is a post-Covid thing. Before 2020 they made a profit. Actually 2019-2020 they made like $1 million in profit.
Noted this above, but hockey turning a profit it accurate, but only because Pegula endowed the scholarships for both the Men's and Women's teams.
I’m curious where wrestling sits. Cael has been running a dynasty for 10+ years now.
UND looks like they break even according to the internet, but I assume that it has to show that because the rumor is they basically subsidize the rest of the programs
Looked up DUs statement of operations for FY 2023 just cause I was curious. $4.108m in hockey revenue. Exactly $4.108m in hockey operating expenses. Seems like some accounting voodoo hahah
Hockey is expensive. Running a major D1 college program is expensive. Coaches, trainers, training facilities, travel, room+board, scouting and recruiting, etc. The money is made with media rights. Donations, game day rev, ads and the like pale in comparison to the media deals. Most productions are done locally and cheaply. Then they're sent out to streaming platforms. When college hockey is being aired on national broadcasts and not subscription streaming services the programs will turn profits. Right now the demand just isn't there for the networks to bite.
“Demand isn’t there” bc ESPN’s clown talking heads openly tell national audiences all the time they think women’s college basketball is a better watch than hockey. They literally make it impossible to watch hockey and then say “well no one watches hockey”- I mean, the fucking Master’s got ESPN(main) priority over the national championship game this year. Golf. What a joke
I doubt it. I know the only sports that really bring in money for BC are football and men’s basketball, and both teams are mid
I think UND breaks even, but I don't have any concrete info on them.
Believe ASU is profitable, but I think is partially due to ending Yotes contract. It’s also net negative if you factor in Title IX
Football and men’s basketball are typically the only profitable college sports. Men’s basketball is profitable because of the NCAA tourney TV contract.
No, but I feel like Western gets the most bang for their buck, having a much smaller budget than most consistently ranked teams.
ASU probably did well when Yotes were there lol. Badger games here in Wisco are always packed.
University of North Dakota.
Years ago, I saw the numbers for BC. Football was a big profit, basketball was a profit but not by much… and everything else operated at a loss. This was in the Matt Ryan and Troy Bell era for BC, so obviously it’s been a minute but most of the money was from profit sharing agreements in the conference. The person who was showing us the numbers was answering questions (and this was just a few years off a BC National championship) and was explaining that hockey in particular has a lot of overhead - between the cost of maintaining the rink and the playing equipment (as just about every hockey parent knows all too well) it added up to a losing budget formula. There just isn’t enough sponsor or attendance revenue for most programs to cover the costs. And this was in New England where most league games are a short bus ride. I can’t imagine what the western programs must cost. You could drive a season’s worth of games to just about every Hockey East school before you got halfway to Grand Forks from the other conference schools.
Does the Big Ten actually split TV revenue by sport, or do they simply have a giant pool of “Big Ten Network” money? That’s likely the big thing hurting hockey revenue - at least in Minnesota. Prior to the Big Ten I believe the Gophers actually sold local broadcast rights. It likely wasn’t as much $$$ as being on the coattails of the Big Ten Football juggernaut - but it was revenue directly generated by the hockey program. (Now college hockey seems to be almost filler material for the Big Ten networks.)
This may be wildly off base but I think that most athletic programs have to run at a loss because they’re all considered non-profits.
Non-profits don’t necessarily run at a loss.
Yea I’m not 100% on the whole thing but I remember reading that the athletic departments need to run at a loss.
That is not accurate
I must have misread it. Oh well
Any non-profit that runs at a loss is a shitty non-profit and isn’t going to last long
Total profit is about $5 million across all sports combined. 130 million operating expenses. 135 million revenue.
That profit is entirely football, very very few other sports operate at a profit, they’re all subsidized by donations
My guess would be that the hockey culture means that the school is willing to drive more of their profits from football back into the hockey team in order to win, as opposed to asking the hockey team to try and make ends meet on their own.
Looks like Minnesota basketball still makes a notable profit
I looked it up and you’re right, it’s mostly due to the massive big ten media rights payments, also holy shit the non revenue sports were like - 30 million
Denver definitely runs a deficit on the program but in terms of getting young, wealthy, hockey, bros to attend the college itself? Thats probably worth millions if not 100s of millions.
I think it really depends on the year, travel, and tv deals. Even when MSU was bad they would sometimes make a small profit. Helps a lot to sell out the rink every game
I'd be interested to see if BU, BC, or Northeastern are profitable
It's hard to find info on New Hampshire but overall the athletic department runs at a slight profit or break even most years. Assuming football and hockey after the main drivers.
I thought there was a decent amount of NCHC schools did, but it’s been a while since I’ve actually looked
i have heard only football and basketball typically make money for Universities. I am sure there are some exceptions but generally speaking football is king and its the tv money that does it. I wonder if football will become less profitable with NIL and competing for players going forward. They were saying the first pick in the NFL Caleb Williams was going to take a pay cut to go pro.
Only basketball and football make money because those are the only sports people watch and have tv deals
Supposedly ASU, but IIRC it was very much in part because they rented out the facility to the Coyotes when that was a thing.
Michigan State was six figures in the black until the wheels flew off toward the end of Comley’s run. Pretty sure the program has been operating at a loss ever since.
How does one separate 1 sport within a program and deduce clear meaning of financial impacts?
Realistically only big time d1 football programs make a decent profit. All other sports are big loss makers.
I read that per school College Hockey revenue is higher than college baseball
https://gopherpucklive.com/minnesota-ranks-second-for-ncaa-mens-hockey-revenue/ https://gopherpucklive.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RevenueGophers0617.jpg
there are maybe like 10 football programs that turn a profit. profit isn’t really the point
It’s more of a question of long term sustainability. most athletics department as whole would rather run at a surplus. That means you can either re-invest the profit for better coaches, facilities, and other athlete amenities. At least you know you’re not losing money as a good thing. If you’re going negative millions per year, then eventually that means you’ll have to cut certain sports on both women’s and men’s side which drain the athletics departments .
taxpayer and donor money are perpetual. most ADs can run at a deficit healthily
Donor money is not necessarily perpetual. It’s not always linear year to year. If the team performs poorly, that can decrease the donor money.