Is football really king?

[EricLA]

Not exactly true - According to the UConn 2010 financial report football generated more than $12 million in revenue followed by bball $7.7 and wbb $4.9 million. That may have changed with the departure of Edsell. The only revenue category where wbb generated more revenue was in TV rights.

i went thru the financial report and couldn't find anything that broke out football vs. basketball. not saying it isn't there, but it's 60 pages long or so and i didn't see it. what i did find was something that broke down the revenues, expenses, and profitability of each program.

Football - $9.96M total revenue,$10.4M expenses, <$454,000> loss

MBasketball - $7.85M total revenue, $5.54M expenses, $2,312,000 profit

WBasketball - $5.56M total revenue, $4.08M expenses, $1,476,000 profit

so my point is, even if the info i found is from 2009 and not 2010, it's also important to look at the expenses. football is much more expensive, partly due to the sheer number of scholarship players on the football team. and the game expenses, team travel, and equipment were more than the men's and women's hoops combined by a wide margin.

i'm not disagreeing that football is king. but our football program is not as profitable compared to other big schools and our hoops programs are more profitable than most, esp. the women's hoops program.

 

[meyers7]

Using the Revs for MLS attendance is like using the Expos for MLB attendance. They have the worst TV/stadium/team situation in the league.

And on the other end Seattle is averaging 37K.

 

[ctchamps]

i went thru the financial report and couldn't find anything that broke out football vs. basketball. not saying it isn't there, but it's 60 pages long or so and i didn't see it. what i did find was something that broke down the revenues, expenses, and profitability of each program.

Football - $9.96M total revenue,$10.4M expenses, <$454,000> loss

MBasketball - $7.85M total revenue, $5.54M expenses, $2,312,000 profit

WBasketball - $5.56M total revenue, $4.08M expenses, $1,476,000 profit

so my point is, even if the info i found is from 2009 and not 2010, it's also important to look at the expenses. football is much more expensive, partly due to the sheer number of scholarship players on the football team. and the game expenses, team travel, and equipment were more than the men's and women's hoops combined by a wide margin.

i'm not disagreeing that football is king. but our football program is not as profitable compared to other big schools and our hoops programs are more profitable than most, esp. the women's hoops program.

The football program is just starting. Men's and women's bb went through their growing pains as well. IIRC the first UConn women's final four when UConn lost to Virgina, the average home attendance for UConn games was less than 100 people/game.

So there is no reason to believe the football team can't have the same type of ascendency. It will never reach the stratosphere of Texas but it could build into something very significant that far exceeds the profitability of the men's bb program. Which is why people who are concerned for the overall health of UConn should be interested in how this realignment process develops.

I was never a fan of the BCS format. It was an obvious attempt to keep the haves in and the have nots out. But it is the way the things are heading and it would be foolish for UConn to ignore this. If they end up in a non BCS football conference all the athletic programs will be negatively impacted. Even the women's program could suffer down the road, although I see this as the one program that will be the least impacted.

 

[alexrgct]

Football is king for the foreseeable future. The math by ticket prices doesn't begin to cover how much money college football makes.

At the University of Texas, you need to donate to the Longhorn Foundation in order to get season tix, and the amount of your donation determines if you get bowl game ticket access through the school, tickets to the OU game in Dallas, etc. Every school, including UConn, has something like this. However, the money the Southern schools make on these donations is obscene.

Football also drives Tier 1 and Tier 2 TV contracts, as well as merchandising.

Culturally speaking, it will be a long, uphill climb for basketball to have the kind of resonance in SEC, B1G, and Big XII country (not to mention most of the ACC), that football does.

The only threat I see to the hegomony of football is concerns over concussions causing the game to be changed in a way that really turns people off of watching it.

Basketball also suffers from the fact that, at least on the men's side, the quality of the product has gotten worse, not better, over the past 20 years. When anyone remotely decent bolts to the NBA as soon as they're able, it makes the college game a lot less fun to watch.

 

[alexrgct]

Put this post on the realignment board. The numbers for Texas are why they will not make concessions for LHN and why the B12 will implode.

LHN is a pretty small amount of Texas's football revenues. It's a brand extension that allows it to maximize its Tier 3 revenue streams.

 

[Artifact]

With the Ivy League it's supposed to be academics first & money second. However with their large alumni gifts & endowments, football money supposely becomes a back seat. As for their academic sport qualifications of players at times I feel they are suspect.

 

[vtcwbuff]

i went thru the financial report and couldn't find anything that broke out football vs. basketball. not saying it isn't there, but it's 60 pages long or so and i didn't see it. what i did find was something that broke down the revenues, expenses, and profitability of each program.

Football - $9.96M total revenue,$10.4M expenses, <$454,000> loss

MBasketball - $7.85M total revenue, $5.54M expenses, $2,312,000 profit

WBasketball - $5.56M total revenue, $4.08M expenses, $1,476,000 profit

so my point is, even if the info i found is from 2009 and not 2010, it's also important to look at the expenses. football is much more expensive, partly due to the sheer number of scholarship players on the football team. and the game expenses, team travel, and equipment were more than the men's and women's hoops combined by a wide margin.

i'm not disagreeing that football is king. but our football program is not as profitable compared to other big schools and our hoops programs are more profitable than most, esp. the women's hoops program.

Eric - The 2010 numbers were from a Bloomberg Report article by Chris Eichleberger. He e-mailed me the financial report submitted to the NCAA and it indicated that UConn's wcbb program was in the red. He based his conclusions on hte numbers in that report. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was fairly significant. I think he also indicated that high salaries were a large part of the red side of the ledger at UConn - and elsewhere. Something like 40% of the operating revenues comes to mind. In any case, it would not surprise me that the team would be in the black in 2009 and show a loss in 2010 as attendance continued to fall.

 

[ctchamps]

LHN is a pretty small amount of Texas's football revenues. It's a brand extension that allows it to maximize its Tier 3 revenue streams.

I understand that. The point is that Texas makes so much more than any other school, it doesn't need conference arrangements. Therefore it will most likely not give in to any demands other B12 schools may make. OU is almost in the same category of earnings. They won't want to see those earnings erode. They will be faced with the decision to stay with Texas because it helps their earnings But they will have to reconcile that doing this they are not standing up to the LHN which could impact them recruitment wise. I think in the end neither university will reconcile over this.