Minnesota Reports Record Revenue and Expenses in NCAA FY24 Financial Reporting

Minneapolis, Minn. — The University of Minnesota Athletic Department FY24 NCAA Financial Report was released this month and an institution record revenue of $151M showed continued recovery from the pandemic that significantly impacted revenues in FY 2021. The record revenues are due largely to the massive media rights deals that the Big Ten Conference has negotiated the past few years and Minnesota’s share has allowed them to also fund an institutional high of $152.5M in expenditures.

The revenue stream for the Gophers relies on five main buckets: Big Ten/NCAA Distributions, Ticket Sales, Fundraising, Sponsorships and Licensing/Concessions/Rentals. Ticket revenue and contributions are two of the main buckets under the control of AD Mark Coyle and Minnesota also saw an institution high of $46,853,086 come in from those two sources. Increased ticket revenue off-set donations dipping slightly from $26.5M in FY23 to $24.2M in FY24.

The new high water mark for revenue in those two buckets should come with an asterisk because athletics have been encouraging donors to give to Dinkytown Athletes which funds NIL to student-athletes. The impact of the NIL funding has been evident across sports on campus because programs have largely funded off other schools from poaching players in the portal.

Men’s hockey has also made a recovery from its pandemic impacted FY as ticket sales have increased from $2.79M in FY22 to $3.76M in FY23 to $4M in FY24. The total revenue attributed to men’s hockey in FY24 was $7.85M, which is an institutional high that surpassed the previous record of $7.68M in FY14 — the first year of the Big Ten Hockey Conference. The number does come with an asterisk as well though because for the first time, the “Program, Novelty, Parking and Concessions” line item was attributed to each sport rather than rolling up into a single amount for all programs. “Royalties, Licensing, Advertisements and Sponsorships” was another line item separated across programs this fiscal year which also impacted the accounting.

The football program also looked stronger from the new accounting practices implemented this year as their revenues were reported to be $90.7M in FY24 up from $77.2M in FY23. The new line items of $2.8M from parking and concessions and $3.4M from licensing and sponsorships are new, but ticket sales went up $2.2M and media rights increased $7.5M. The bowl revenue share was nearly the same from the past few reports, but FY25 should see a significant increase as the conference will share the $46M of revenue from Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Indiana’s participation in the $116 College Football Playoff.

The next big question for finances in NCAA athletics will be revenue sharing for next season. The budget will have to account for approximately $21M needed to pay athletes starting in 2024-25. At the school’s Board of Regents meeting in July 2024, Coyle said that the school will need to focus on regional travel for non-revenue sports, they’ll have to slow facilities projects and potentially there could be scholarship reductions in non-revenue sports.

“As we face these new challenges, ideally when you look at our 22 sports programs, we need to focus on what we provide our student athlete,” said Coyle.”I think it’s going to look different.”

Note on why Minnesota had a negative bottom line with revenues and expenses: “The Revenue & Expense Statement bottom line on this report for FY24 is -$1,471,063. The reported loss on this report is due to the timing of expenses related to replacing digital boards and control room equipment spread out over multiple years which totaled approximately $3.4M in FY24. The $1.47M loss reported in this FY24 NCAA report is covered by the positive bottom lines reported in FY23 and FY22. The annual operating budget was balanced each year from FY22 through FY24, and the cumulative bottom line for the NCAA report is positive from FY22 through FY24.”