UConn cuts athletic budget deficit as school reports revenue increase in financial report to NCAA
Mike Anthony, Staff WriterJan. 15, 2024
The UConn athletic department has submitted its annual financial report to the NCAA and there is, as usual, a wide gap between revenue and expenses that is bridged by a university subsidy. That gap has shrunk, though. More specifically, UConn athletics in fiscal year 2023 cut direct institutional support by 35 percent.
The athletic department’s total expenditures were $93.1 million, met with the push of $30.2 million in institutional support.
That is $16.3 million less than the $46.5 million athletics received in 2022 , when former men’s basketball coach Kevin Ollie received $13.4 million owed to him.
That gap has shrunk, though. More specifically, UConn athletics in fiscal year 2023 cut direct institutional support by 35 percent.
The overall subsidy, with student fees taken into account, was $53 million in 2022 and $35.8 in 2023.
Whether it’s $50 million or $30 million, such subsidies are always going to be met with skepticism by factions of the tax-paying public. UConn athletics has, though, generated more money in recent years, capitalizing most recently on the success of the men’s basketball program, which generated $10.6 million in 2023.
Absent an affiliation with a lucrative Power Five conference, annual TV contract payouts to member schools are 10 times what UConn earns as a member of the Big East, there will always be an eye-opening difference between money generated and money spent – if UConn continues to maintain the profile and compete at the level the state expects it to.
Football operated at a $14 million deficit in 2023, which included Jim Mora’s first season as coach. Ticket sales were up, though. While the Huskies dipped to 3-9 this past season after Mora debut with a 6-7 record in a bowl game appearance the year before, the hope is that the program, which operates independent of any conference, continues to improve. Benedict hopes some of the same revenue opportunities that UConn saw in men’s basketball – more ticket sales at a higher price, for instance – can be realized in football.
Dan Hurley was hired as basketball coach in 2018 and the Huskies, in year five, won the 2023 national championship. That was a boon for the entire athletic operation.
UConn is in the third year of an escalating price model for tickets at Gampel Pavilion and the XL Center and most home games are sold out.
UConn said athletics self-generated nearly 60 percent of its own revenue in 2023, up from 44 percent in 2022. There were 7,257 donors, with total commitments having doubled since 2019 and up 59 percent from 2016 (athletic director David Benedict’s first year on the job). Since 2020, there have been $98.2 million in donations. Ticket sales, overall, were up about $3 million in 2023.
The $93.1 million budget is made up of $83.1 million in direct revenue and expenses, “plus $2.85 million in payments of interest on bonds for stadium and AAC exit fees, and $7.15 million in activity through donor-supported funds maintained by the UConn Foundation,” a statement read.
The donation-based UConn Foundation is a dollar-in-dollar-out enterprise that doesn’t effect department spending in that it simply stockpiles money and spends how it sees fit – on, for instance, recruiting travel and charter flights for the basketball program.
Overall costs, according to the university's updated online annual report, were reduced in 2023 to $82.3 million from $89.7 million in 2022. UConn claims that about $16 million in annual costs are “transferred within the university and to other state agencies such as tuition and housing payments for student-athletes and rental fees at Pratt & Whitney Stadium and XL Center.”
