Some takeaways from the Denver Post article on CU finances, along with info from other sources:
1. Rick George has done an excellent job of financially managing the Athletic Department by continuing to run the AD in the black. AD revenue has grown from $58.9M in 2014 (losing $2.7M) to $86.5M in 2017 (break even with a negligible profit shown).
2. CU's student fee to support athletics is $28.50 per semester. LINK Graduate students do not pay this fee. Undergrad enrollment is 27,665 students. That's $1.58M in student fees toward athletics.
3. CU has very little revenue from sponsorships. While it sells advertising and certain sponsorships, it has not entered the stadium naming rights game yet. Rick George has said in numerous interviews that this is something he is pursuing. These deals generally go for between $1.5M and $4.5M per year for a P5 athletic department. Obviously, this would be a significant revenue stream.
4. Beer sales numbers are hidden within the numbers for catering services. But I found something from UW's student newspaper that reported $60-70k per football game in beer revenue as a bump. Considering that plus basketball games and other sports where CU sells beer (volleyball, soccer, etc.), I think we can figure that this has added somewhere between $500k and $1M in new revenue -- while making fans a lot happier with the game day experience.
5. The CU AD paying out-of-state tuition rates for student-athletes seems to be a competitive disadvantage for CU as compared to other schools.
(As I posted on 247sports)
Doing the math on $10.87M:
CU's in-state tuition rate is $30k per year.
CU's out-of-state tuition rate is $54k per year.
Scholarship limits per CU varsity sport for 2017-18:
Men's BB = 13
Men's XC/TF = 12.6
Men's FB = 85
Men's Golf = 4.5
Men's Ski = 6.3
Women's BB = 15
Women's XC/TF = 18
Women's Golf = 6
Women's LAX = 12
Women's Ski = 7
Women's Tennis = 8
Women's VB = 12
TOTAL CU = 179.4
http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html
$10.87M / 179.4 = $60,590
Factoring in any lab fees, medical retirements and graduate assistants is probably why that number is over $54k.
But obviously CU's AD is paying the out-of-state rate for every scholar-athlete. If our peers are paying a lower rate (in-state rate, for example), that puts CU at a serious disadvantage. At a similar overage % to in-state rate as the above math showed we'd factor $35k per athlete for 179.4 athletes. With that, the cost to the AD would be $6.28M to fund athletic scholarships. We're talking about $4.5M in additional AD budget if CU made this change.
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To compare some of this stuff to a Pac-12 peer, we can look at Arizona State.
-- Student fee is $75 per semester with an enrollment of 59k undergrads and 13k postgrads. ASU charges everyone the athletics fee. This brings in about $10.5M a year. That's $9M more than CU gets from the same type of fee. If CU did the same rate as ASU and included postgrads, with its lower total enrollment of 33,246 CU would earn $5.0M per year -- an additional $3.5M from its current number.
-- ASU's total AD revenue was $94.6M in 2016 and was expected to be over $100M for 2017. That's an additional $15M for their budget. Some of that difference is also due to ASU getting $4.225M per year from Adidas in cash & apparel compared to CU getting $3M per year from Nike.
-- Another factor at work here on finances for ASU is that they have tuition costs of $27.5k for in-state and $44k for out-of-state. That's a pretty significant savings when they reimburse the university for its scholarships. However, they do "full cost of attendance" reimbursement and have a lot more sports/athletes, so their 2016 expense here was $14M. With that, though, ASU offers Men's varsity Baseball, Tennis, Ice Hockey and Wrestling which CU doesn't (they don't have Skiing, which we do). On the Women's varsity side, ASU offers Beach Volleyball, Gymnastics, Softball, Swimming & Diving, Triathlon and Water Polo which CU doesn't (again, they don't have Skiing, which we do). This is the big difference allowed by the additional revenue. That's 8 varsity sports more than CU offers.
-- Even with 8 more sports than CU and the associated facilities maintenance costs, coaches, scholarships, etc., ASU was able to return a $5.5M surplus in 2016.
1. Rick George has done an excellent job of financially managing the Athletic Department by continuing to run the AD in the black. AD revenue has grown from $58.9M in 2014 (losing $2.7M) to $86.5M in 2017 (break even with a negligible profit shown).
2. CU's student fee to support athletics is $28.50 per semester. LINK Graduate students do not pay this fee. Undergrad enrollment is 27,665 students. That's $1.58M in student fees toward athletics.
3. CU has very little revenue from sponsorships. While it sells advertising and certain sponsorships, it has not entered the stadium naming rights game yet. Rick George has said in numerous interviews that this is something he is pursuing. These deals generally go for between $1.5M and $4.5M per year for a P5 athletic department. Obviously, this would be a significant revenue stream.
4. Beer sales numbers are hidden within the numbers for catering services. But I found something from UW's student newspaper that reported $60-70k per football game in beer revenue as a bump. Considering that plus basketball games and other sports where CU sells beer (volleyball, soccer, etc.), I think we can figure that this has added somewhere between $500k and $1M in new revenue -- while making fans a lot happier with the game day experience.
5. The CU AD paying out-of-state tuition rates for student-athletes seems to be a competitive disadvantage for CU as compared to other schools.
(As I posted on 247sports)
Doing the math on $10.87M:
CU's in-state tuition rate is $30k per year.
CU's out-of-state tuition rate is $54k per year.
Scholarship limits per CU varsity sport for 2017-18:
Men's BB = 13
Men's XC/TF = 12.6
Men's FB = 85
Men's Golf = 4.5
Men's Ski = 6.3
Women's BB = 15
Women's XC/TF = 18
Women's Golf = 6
Women's LAX = 12
Women's Ski = 7
Women's Tennis = 8
Women's VB = 12
TOTAL CU = 179.4
http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html
$10.87M / 179.4 = $60,590
Factoring in any lab fees, medical retirements and graduate assistants is probably why that number is over $54k.
But obviously CU's AD is paying the out-of-state rate for every scholar-athlete. If our peers are paying a lower rate (in-state rate, for example), that puts CU at a serious disadvantage. At a similar overage % to in-state rate as the above math showed we'd factor $35k per athlete for 179.4 athletes. With that, the cost to the AD would be $6.28M to fund athletic scholarships. We're talking about $4.5M in additional AD budget if CU made this change.
***************
To compare some of this stuff to a Pac-12 peer, we can look at Arizona State.
-- Student fee is $75 per semester with an enrollment of 59k undergrads and 13k postgrads. ASU charges everyone the athletics fee. This brings in about $10.5M a year. That's $9M more than CU gets from the same type of fee. If CU did the same rate as ASU and included postgrads, with its lower total enrollment of 33,246 CU would earn $5.0M per year -- an additional $3.5M from its current number.
-- ASU's total AD revenue was $94.6M in 2016 and was expected to be over $100M for 2017. That's an additional $15M for their budget. Some of that difference is also due to ASU getting $4.225M per year from Adidas in cash & apparel compared to CU getting $3M per year from Nike.
-- Another factor at work here on finances for ASU is that they have tuition costs of $27.5k for in-state and $44k for out-of-state. That's a pretty significant savings when they reimburse the university for its scholarships. However, they do "full cost of attendance" reimbursement and have a lot more sports/athletes, so their 2016 expense here was $14M. With that, though, ASU offers Men's varsity Baseball, Tennis, Ice Hockey and Wrestling which CU doesn't (they don't have Skiing, which we do). On the Women's varsity side, ASU offers Beach Volleyball, Gymnastics, Softball, Swimming & Diving, Triathlon and Water Polo which CU doesn't (again, they don't have Skiing, which we do). This is the big difference allowed by the additional revenue. That's 8 varsity sports more than CU offers.
-- Even with 8 more sports than CU and the associated facilities maintenance costs, coaches, scholarships, etc., ASU was able to return a $5.5M surplus in 2016.
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