The outlook for South Carolina’s athletic revenue is optimistic — with major caveats
In looking ahead to the South Carolina athletic department’s next financial year, school board of trustee member Mack Whittle perhaps offered the biggest take-home point about the projected budget the school made public Friday.
“The only thing certain about this budget is that it will change,” Whittle said.
Simply put, no projection can be close to firm until the school knows how many football games will be played and how many tickets can be sold, both issues that are in doubt because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on the numbers presented, it appears the projected budget assumes full football stadiums come fall. The projected ticket revenue falls by $1.387 million ($20.9 million to $19.5 million), but athletic director Ray Tanner said that is because of a less attractive home football slate (Alabama and Clemson came to Columbia last year).
Overall, the projected revenue is just more than $127 million, up less than $2 million from last year. Expenses are projected to rise slightly to just more than $114 million, although that does not account for voluntary pay cuts taken by some of the highest-paid employees in the department.
Tanner made the point that everything will have to pivot when the plan for football ticketing is settled later in the summer. Teams have already done some belt tightening when it comes to travel, and they could do more.
“Everything is on the table,” Tanner said. “We do have another model of operations that could be 10-15 percent more of cuts.
“We will try to do our very best to get in a position of $8 [million] to $10 million of cost savings for sure, based on some model that we’re having to deal with or will have to deal with that we’re not anticipating.”
Tanner was asked if the SEC distributions could take a hit next year as they did this year following the cancellation of the NCAA tournament. He said the money from the SEC Network should be stable as long at teams play their games (even if there are few or no fans).
The listed budget has the department’s debt down to $163.945 million, but that doesn’t include financing more than $22 million in improvements to Williams-Brice Stadium.
Key numbers to know:
Tentative projected revenue for 2020-21 year: $127.136 million
Tentative projected expenses: $114,196,700
Largest revenue sources:
SEC/NCAA distribution - $47.415 million
Tickets - $19.528 million
Sponsorships and royalties - $17.555 million
Gamecock Club - $12.970 million
Largest expense categories:
Personnel - $54.545 million (will drop)
Facilities - $8.811 million
Event/game services - $7.696 million
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 12:12 PM with the headline "The outlook for South Carolina’s athletic revenue is optimistic — with major caveats."
