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See Also:
- College Sports Revenue 2011: The List
- College Sports Revenue 2011: Changes
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As we near November, schools are beginning to file their Equity In Athletics reports for the 2010-2011 reporting period. Right now less than 40% of the Top 100 revenue schools have reported, but some interesting data is out there already. One hint – guess who crossed $150 million in revenue this year?
But perhaps the most interesting data available now is the 2010-2011 revenue of Auburn and Alabama. The two Alabama schools are among five SEC schools which had filed reports as of Oct. 30.
Unsurprisingly, Auburn saw a pretty big jump in its BCS Championship year, vaulting from $92.6 million in revenue for 2009-2010 to $104 million in 2010-2011. More than $10 million of that $11.4 million jump is directly credited to “football revenue”. Insert “Cam Newton was a bargain at $180K” joke here. But suffice it to say Auburn’s 12.3% revenue bump says a good bit about what a BCS title is worth.
And with that jump Auburn becomes the 5th SEC team to cross the $100 million revenue mark (Alabama, Florida, LSU and Tennessee being the others) and the 9th school in the NCAA to reach that level (though Oklahoma will likely also reach it this year, and Wisconsin has a shot to).
Interestingly, Alabama’s revenue actually declined last year, dropping from $129.3 million in 2009-2010 to $123.9 million in 2010-2011. By Alabama’s accounting, “football revenue” actually rose by nearly $5 million (a 6.8% jump to $76.8 million) and the net revenue decline was a result of “not allocated by gender/sport” revenue falling 27.8% from $40 million to $28.9 million. My hunch is that the big unallocated decline was largely a result of a flood of contributions that came in in advance of the opening of the Bryant-Denny expansion in 2010 distorting the numbers somewhat that year, along with a contribution boost during Bama’s BCS title run. In 2008-2009, unallocated revenue was just $28.4 million, so that $40 million looks like a real outlier.
In any event, after Alabama began to seriously pull away from Auburn at the cash register in 2008 and 2009, I know a chart like this will warm an Aubie’s heart:
No, they’re still not quite on the same level, but the gap has shrunk from $36.7 million in Bama’s BCS title year to just under $20 million after Auburn got theirs.
And, since Georgia comparisons are always relevant to Auburn, the Plainsmen also pulled further away from the Bulldogs this past year. Georgia had decent growth of just under 5% to end up with $92.3 million in revenue, but Auburn’s 12.3% jump has grown the spread between Georgia and Auburn revenue to $11.6 million from $4.6 million a year ago. Auburn will likely also pull closer to Tennessee, which has yet to report for 2011 but brought in $100.7 million in 2009-2010, and conceivably could pass the Vols to claim 4th place in the SEC Money Chase.
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Previously
- College Sports Revenue 2011: Michigan Money
- College Sports Revenue 2011: The Longhorns’ Big Bucks
- College Sports Revenue 2011: Setting The Stage
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