Big East ONLY Basketball Conference to Top $150 Million in Profits

[Aughnanure]

This seems questionable to me, but I'll take the good news.

BASKETBALL CONFERENCES REALIGN TO SHOOT FOR $150 MILLION PROFIT
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2014/07/30/follow-money-realignment/

Follow the money to understand all of the conference moves:

Conference   Top Recruits   NBA/team   Profit   Profit
Big East   1st   5th   1st   $154,122,296
Big Ten   5th   6th   2nd   $138,054,933
ACC           2nd   2nd   3rd   $133,479,911
SEC           3rd   3rd   4th   $124,636,534
Big 12   6th   4th   5th   $105,706,308
Pac 12   4th   1st   6th   $80,129,005

[Chicago_inferiority_complexes]

Is this just related to TV rights or something else?

[tower912]

It has to be something else, unless they counted all of the money from the TV deal up front, which I doubt.   I suspect it is the TV deal, the ticket receipts, the tourney shares, etc.   

[Coleman]

It is talking about profits, not revenue.

I wonder if this is because none of the schools in our conference have to support football. For 90% of schools, football is a money-losing venture, which would eat away at their bottom line.

Its impossible to parse it out for basketball only because the numbers in athletic budgets can be cooked however you want to hide or show which programs are losing money or making money. And certain things are hard to parse out...like shared services, academic support, weightroom equipment, etc. that are used by all athletic programs.

[Benny B]

It is talking about profits, not revenue.

I wonder if this is because none of the schools in our conference have to support football. For 90% of schools, football is a money-losing venture, which would eat away at their bottom line.

Its impossible to parse it out for basketball only because the numbers in athletic budgets can be cooked however you want to hide or show which programs are losing money or making money. And certain things are hard to parse out...like shared services, academic support, weightroom equipment, etc. that are used by all athletic programs.

So either:

A) The Big East plays the most profitable basketball
or
B) The BCS schools are artificially inflating their football profits by shifting expenses to basketball and other sports, yet most of them can still only break even on football.

Either one would seem to be an indictment of how the finances behind college football are simply broken.

[Atticus]

So either:

A) The Big East plays the most profitable basketball
or
B) The BCS schools are artificially inflating their football profits by shifting expenses to basketball and other sports, yet most of them can still only break even on football.

Either one would seem to be an indictment of how the finances behind college football are simply broken.

A) These lousy numbers suggest that the average BE basketball team turns a PROFIT of $15M. Do you really believe that is possible? DePaul, Xavier, Seton Hall, SJU, Nova. Hell, there are teams in the BE that probably dont even generate $15M in REVENUE.

B) Why would schools want to inflate football profit? For what purpose? I did audit for 6 years and have friends in the business that audit universities. They get fairly close to the AD numbers. In fact, I was told there are two common conversations being discussed around the country that both involve minimizing AD profit. Its better for public perception if schools are doing little more than breaking even rather than raking in 10's of millions of dollars per year. One thing schools are thinking about (and doing) is forcing the athletic departments to pay "rent" for university-owned gameday facilities. In fact, some schools "charge" up to $1M per home football game. So that could be an extra $6M in expenses that...really arent expenses. The other conversation is moving the academic tuition scholarship money from the individual colleges that the student athletes enroll in to the athletic department. Imagine if an athletic department has to pay for the tuition schlarship for every single athlete. There's another couple million per year in "expenses."

[forgetful]

A) These lousy numbers suggest that the average BE basketball team turns a PROFIT of $15M. Do you really believe that is possible? DePaul, Xavier, Seton Hall, SJU, Nova. Hell, there are teams in the BE that probably dont even generate $15M in REVENUE.

B) Why would schools want to inflate football profit? For what purpose? I did audit for 6 years and have friends in the business that audit universities. They get fairly close to the AD numbers. In fact, I was told there are two common conversations being discussed around the country that both involve minimizing AD profit. Its better for public perception if schools are doing little more than breaking even rather than raking in 10's of millions of dollars per year. One thing schools are thinking about (and doing) is forcing the athletic departments to pay "rent" for university-owned gameday facilities. In fact, some schools "charge" up to $1M per home football game. So that could be an extra $6M in expenses that...really arent expenses. The other conversation is moving the academic tuition scholarship money from the individual colleges that the student athletes enroll in to the athletic department. Imagine if an athletic department has to pay for the tuition schlarship for every single athlete. There's another couple million per year in "expenses."

The purpose is the vast majority of universities lose money on football.  Even as it is, there is a lot of animosity on campus's towards the football programs because of their cost.  If they reported the exact profits and expenses, that uproar would have been even stronger.

So they try to make things balance.  That means inflating revenues, by listing all apparel sales and merchandising as being football affiliated.  At the same time you decrease expenses by allocating some of them to other programs.  They also offset expenses, by listing a lot of the support staff as University affiliated instead of football affiliated. 

I have no doubt that some of the reasons why the BCS conferences have lower basketball profits, is because of accounting to boost football.

[Jay Bee]

So they try to make things balance.  That means inflating revenues, by listing all apparel sales and merchandising as being football affiliated. 

Nah. Apparel sales and merchandising is a blip on the radar of total revenues.

[Atticus]

Nah. Apparel sales and merchandising is a blip on the radar of total revenues.

You mean to say that UK football didnt care about the 40-0 basketball shirts that got marked down to $1? Get outta town.

[bilsu]

I wonder if there is some buy out money in these numbers. Remember Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia had to pay some money to the league. another source would be NCAA tournament revenue, which is paid out over a number of years and you have to wonder whether Blue and Gold Fund donations are counted in this. You would think at least the mandatory seat doantions would be counted.

[Atticus]

I wonder if there is some buy out money in these numbers. Remember Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia had to pay some money to the league. another source would be NCAA tournament revenue, which is paid out over a number of years and you have to wonder whether Blue and Gold Fund donations are counted in this. You would think at least the mandatory seat doantions would be counted.

You can count everything under the sun. The article clearly stated the word "profit," not revenue. DePaul and Seton Hall dont add anything.

[Jay Bee]

Guys, here's what it is: nonsense.

Bad comps, inadequate data. It's simply flawed information.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Guys, here's what it is: nonsense.

Bad comps, inadequate data. It's simply flawed information.

Clearly you are an ESPN agent sent to further their anti-Big East agenda

[Tums Festival]

You have to wonder what his numbers are. Not sure how a TV contract that pays out $500 million over 12 years can produce a one year profit in excess of $150 million.

[The Equalizer]

In his his Breitbart article, John missed two key pieces of information from his orginal source that indicate that the numbers he's using are 2013 revenue--not 2014 profit.

He actually provided the link to his source in the article--Statistic Brain. Anyone can go look at the data.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/ncaa-college-athletics-statistics/

So first, about halfway down, there is a table with the column on the left labelled "Most Profitable College Basketball conferences".  That's probably what confused John into thinking the numbers in the right hand column were conference profits.  The column on the right is a table of "Men's Basketball Revenue".

Second is that John probably missed the date provided for the source information by Statistic Brain, which is listed as 4/26/14. Because schools' fiscal years typicaly end on 6/30 (and MU's certainly does), the data compiled and verified by 4/26/14 cannot possibly include the 2014 data which won't be available until 7/1/14 at the earliest.

Since the Fox Sports 1 contract didn't take effect until the 2013-14 season, it had no impact on the $154 million revenue (not profit) number reported here.

The one thing we don't know is whether the Statistic Brain's $154 revenue number comprises the sum of the revenue for the 10 teams in the current Big East or the 15 teams that actually were in the league for 2012-13.

[forgetful]

In his his Breitbart article, John missed two key pieces of information from his orginal source that indicate that the numbers he's using are 2013 revenue--not 2014 profit.

He actually provided the link to his source in the article--Statistic Brain. Anyone can go look at the data.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/ncaa-college-athletics-statistics/

So first, about halfway down, there is a table with the column on the left labelled "Most Profitable College Basketball conferences".  That's probably what confused John into thinking the numbers in the right hand column were conference profits.  The column on the right is a table of "Men's Basketball Revenue".

Second is that John probably missed the date provided for the source information by Statistic Brain, which is listed as 4/26/14. Because schools' fiscal years typicaly end on 6/30 (and MU's certainly does), the data compiled and verified by 4/26/14 cannot possibly include the 2014 data which won't be available until 7/1/14 at the earliest.

Since the Fox Sports 1 contract didn't take effect until the 2013-14 season, it had no impact on the $154 million revenue (not profit) number reported here.

The one thing we don't know is whether the Statistic Brain's $154 revenue number comprises the sum of the revenue for the 10 teams in the current Big East or the 15 teams that actually were in the league for 2012-13.

It's actually data from the 2009-2010 year.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/03/01/revenue-comparisons-among-division-i-mens-basketball-conferences/

Note that the values used in the Breitbart article are the same in this 2011 article.

[Jay Bee]

UGH! Please stop.

Here's the deal: There are a million things flawed with this. Stop.

Even if you looked at most current disclosures under the EADA, you'd be screwed because reporting methodology is not consistent among schools.. it's not even consistent between years of the SAME school. You'll looking at numbers that mean NADA. It's b.s.

Another lesson here is to understand the source. Is the source data from 'statistic brain'? No. Is it from Forbes? NO.

Source data is here: http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/index.aspx

But again.. that's of little help because the data is all nonsense.

The disclosures that the article pulled from 'Statistic Brain' that say the source was the 'NCAA' and the date verified was April 2014 are from 5 years ago.

Take Michigan as an example. See how their revenues have changed since then? "Uhh, must be the Big Ten Network stuff!" is what some will say. They did renovate the stadium and tag boosters with higher premium seating fees... but try to reconcile the amounts and you cannot do so.

Michigan revenues from 2007-08 through 2012-13:
52,246,025
63,189,417
70,300,676
85,209,247
81,475,191

...how about over in East Lansing? Same conference 'n everything. Must have seen that Big Ten Network boost as well, yeah?
43,506,725
44,462,659
45,040,778
49,754,373
47,869,615


It's crap. The data, that is.

Playing with 5 year old data is inherently flawed. But, the point is even if the original article had used the most current available data the exercise is still a waste and will bring people to awful and false conclusions.

[bilsu]

This just goes to show how unbiased this board is. We attack articles that makes the Big East look bad and we attack the articles that make the Big East look good.

[chapman]

You can conclude that the Big East probably isn't hurting financially.  That's about it.  Same with the MU basketball spend articles; you can conclude that MU spends a boatload on its program, not that they spend $10M per year or that they're Xth in the country as the articles may try to state.

[Coleman]

The purpose is the vast majority of universities lose money on football.  Even as it is, there is a lot of animosity on campus's towards the football programs because of their cost.  If they reported the exact profits and expenses, that uproar would have been even stronger.

So they try to make things balance.  That means inflating revenues, by listing all apparel sales and merchandising as being football affiliated.  At the same time you decrease expenses by allocating some of them to other programs.  They also offset expenses, by listing a lot of the support staff as University affiliated instead of football affiliated.  

I have no doubt that some of the reasons why the BCS conferences have lower basketball profits, is because of accounting to boost football.

This is the point I was driving at. I am almost certain this is indeed the case.

It is not so much an endorsement of Big East basketball, but an indictment of how much money the average NCAA football program loses.

[Benny B]

This just goes to show how unbiased this board is. We attack articles that makes the Big East look bad and we attack the articles that make the Big East look good.

Yep... that's pretty much Scoop in 25 words or less.

[dgies9156]

I wonder if there is some buy out money in these numbers. Remember Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia had to pay some money to the league.

Excellent question.  +1000000

[Dawson Rental]

This just goes to show how unbiased this board is. We attack articles that makes the Big East look bad and we attack the articles that make the Big East look good.

Quite perceptive.

For those who don't know, the article which is the subject of this thread was written by John Pudner, an esteemed MU alum who IIRC posts here as bamamarquettefan.  John also does quite well in his day job as a political consultant.

Given that these numbers come from Forbes, and John obviously finds them credible, frankly, I'm skeptical about any other Scoop posters credentials to challenge them.

[Benny B]

Quite perceptive.

For those who don't know, the article which is the subject of this thread was written by John Pudner, an esteemed MU alum who IIRC posts here as bamamarquette fan.  John also does quite well in his day job as a political consultant.

Given that these numbers come from Forbes, and John obviously finds them credible, frankly, I'm skeptical about any other Scoop posters credentials to challenge them.

Ooooooooooooooohhhhh Snap.

I'll take it one step further.... I have two words for anyone wishing to challenge the credibility behind the numbers: "Eric" and "Cantor"

Boom. [/drop mic]

[GGGG]

The problem I have with all of these statistics is that they make assumptions on the value of the "football part" of a television rights deal and the "basketball part."  Some of these assumptions are solid because they are broken down rather easily, but a lot of them are along the lines of "ESPN is paying $$$ for first and second tier football rights, as well as the right to televise ### basketball games per year."

How do you place a value on each part of that deal?

The take away I get is that BE basketball is very profitable.  Is it "the most" profitable?  Really who knows.  But the BE schools are making money on this, just like a lot of people predicted when the C7 went its own way.