Alford took time to share some key statistics on the financial status of the Seminoles and how the program stacks up in regard to major conferences.
According to numbers he shared, if conference distributions were removed (TV contracts, postseason payouts, etc.), FSU would rank third in the SEC in revenue generated — ahead of schools like the Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers and Florida Gators.
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When comparing against Big 10 schools, Florida State ranks third, behind the Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines but ahead of the Penn State Nittany Lions, Iowa Hawkeyes, Wisconsin Badgers, and others.
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After reading this, I decided to do the same thing for VT - Per the the FY 2019 data from the Knight Commission, VT brought in $96.77m that year, about $36m of which is from TV contracts, meaning that just under $60m comes from donations, ticket sales, etc.
That's good for... third to last in both the SEC and B10 (in 2019).
The breakdown of where that $60M comes from, if anyone is wondering:
- Sponsorships & Licensing: $2.81M
- Institutional Support: $10.28M (see bullet 4 below for a disclaimer)
- Ticket Sales: $20.54M
- Over Revenue: $7.89M
- Donor Contributions: $18.9M
A few disclaimers and callouts:
- Fiscal year runs from July of the current year to June of the following year - so FY 2019 is July 2019-June 2020.
- Worth noting that FSU pulled in $152m in total revenue in FY19, but just under $130m in FY20 and FY21 - I think it's safe to assume that the FSU AD cherry picked a year that (1) was unaffected by COVID, and (2) made FSU look good (consider the audience).
- For those wondering, VT pulled in $96.77M, $99.19M, and $90.3M in FY19-FY21, respectively
- Per the knight commission, VT reports $0 in institutional support, but $10.28M in student fees. The knight commission says FSU in 2019 collected $7.18M categorized as 'institutional support' and $8.43M categorized as 'student fees'. The tomahawk nation article just shows ~$15M in institutional support.
- For anyone wondering, The Knight Commission defines 'other revenue' as "Revenue from the following categories: Compensation and benefits provided by a third party; game program, novelty, parking and concession sales; sports camps and clinics; athletics restricted endowment and investments income; and, other operating revenue."
- Regarding sponsorships/licensing - this is more than just apparel. Looks like FSU signed a ten year deal with Nike paying $1.45m/year starting in May 2014 (right after their national championship season). VT's Nike Deal paid $275k in 2019. So, while FSU clearly has a better apparel deal than VT, they are also getting significantly more money from other sponsorships.
Comments
Those donor numbers and institutional support numbers hit hard on Tech. Great leg work here.
We're getting killed in licensing and donations. Institutional support not a big deal since we have large student fees.
All data from 2019 (to stay consistent). Data pulled from the 'custom reporting' page on the knight commission. I went back and typed in the VT info after, hence why that data is rounded but other medians are not.
How are we so much lower than the ACC median? Particularly in the sponsorship and licensing category?
Really? $3 million? There seems to be room for improvement there. VT merch is expensive enough that this number should be higher.
Nike deal bro
Brutal.
It was one of the lowest paying P5 apparel deals in 2016
https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/article/2016/05/25/virginia-techs-nik...
Edit: this has that deal as expiring in 2022 but in my head i thought it was still a couple years away? Maybe someone has better/newer info
I just noticed the same thing, from your link.
Pretty terrible time to have to renegotiate that, but also a terrible time to be stuck with the old deal. From that link, it looks like Clemson's deal is less than $3 million.
This might require further analysis.
Almost every team with a Nike deal has online fan complaints about how their deal is terrible. They are the biggest dog, and uniform the most teams, and as such the desirability of their branding means they can get away with paying less for them, while the competitors like Adidas and UA throw bigger sums of money to breakthrough from a smaller pool of schools. The fan solution is, across the board, "we should get one of these huge UA and Adidas deals," which obviously it isn't that easy. Additionally, you run the risk of a less reliable company, like Under Armour, backing out of their huge deal with UCLA and getting sued. While I think we need a better apparel deal, and should make sure we get a better one when we are out of contract, I don't think this is truly a major driving factor of football program disparity.
tldr; there's a subset of almost every fanbase of a Nike school that comes up with the idea "We should just get a huge deal from Adidas or Under Armour"
I believe I saw a Bitter tweet earlier this year that said it was extended to the end of the 2022-23 academic calendar
I wondered what was going on when the bball team announced new jerseys. I feel like we've been talking about this so long it will never die. TKP had always at war with Nike Deal.
I addressed this in the last bullet in the OP, but the Nike deal isn't the biggest issue
Edit to expand: This table shows cash from apperals deals as a percent of total licensing for public schools in the ACC. As you can see, our Nike deal is only 9% of our total licensing.
Disclaimers:
Perhaps, but it's something, and from that article due for an update.
I appreciate the research you did...
Update (based on your update): wow. Seems like hiring someone from one of these other universities who knows how to develop/establish a better licensing deal would be worth doing. Something is clearly getting lost here.
Part of its situational - UNC is Jordan. Louisville named their stadium after papa John's. I think city schools tend to be more attractive for licensing (eg GT).
But yea, there's no reason for us to be soooo far behind everyone else in the acc here.
Hasn't been the case since 2018.
This data is all from FY 2019 (to stay consistent with the article that inspired this research), which is from June 2018-July 2019. Might be some overlap there.
But, point taken, good call out.
If the ACC median is $12 million, seems that we should be a lot closer to that than $3 million.
I'm sure there is a complicated reason, and that Whit is aware of it, even if we're not.
Why is ours that lowwwww 😭
I would say it's mostly because Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg and not Richmond or NoVa.
I imagine the issue is deeper than that. Maybe it's simply a combination of poor product + under populated location, but we're so far out of the league (compared to other public schools)
It's probably never really been explored at VT to be honest. There is a ton of untapped potential that we have just not really put much effort into because of small town mindset that is pervasive in Blacksburg. Academic side is moving mountains and raking in cash. Athletics is so woefully behind it is embarrassing. How is there no synergy here?
My guess is that it's also a 'fires burning everywhere' situation - that's to say, licensing is lower priority compared to increasing the donor base, facilities, etc
Can you expand on the Academic side? Would love to learn more about this, as well as other schools that have capitalized on synergies across campus.
VT in the last 8-10 years has really made huge strides in fundraising and advancement on the academic side. I can't remember exact numbers but didn't we just have an enormous record for academic fundraising last year? And also the single biggest donation/endowment from an individual ever received in about the same timeframe? I guess what I'm saying is, there are a lot of people really excited about VT and investing heavily in the academic side. I wonder if we can't take some of that interest/excitement and inject into athletics as well. It just doesn't seem we are receiving the same financial firepower and interest when it comes to athletics.
Interesting. Would love to read more about this if you have any good articles/pieces. I'm pretty ignorant about how academics fundraises. Paging Guitarman - would be great if you had any insight here.
Anyways, I (like you, I think) do struggle to understand how a school like VT - which (a) places a lot of graduates in high paying careers and (b) is very 'football focused' - faces so many challenges fundraising for athletics (relative to similar institutions). My hypothesis is that there are a couple overarching factors at play:
Some news articles on academic giving
https://vtx.vt.edu/articles/2022/08/fy22results.html
https://roanoke.com/news/local/education/virginia-tech-breaks-fundraisin...
Bar bringing the fire content yet again.
fittingly in bar graph form
Relevant: a UF fan on r/CFB recently made a post
debunkingcriticizing the FSU AD's presentation. It's quite a long post, but it boils down to:1st and 2nd points are weak. 3rd point is irrelevant.
The other money and institutional support numbers for FSU are boosting those numbers higher. It also means they are either charging higher student fees or actually being subsidized by the university instead of being self sufficient.
https://www.clemson.edu/finance/accfo-2017/sponsors.html
https://hokiesports.com/sports/2018/4/19/img-sponsorships.aspx
The difference is staggering. Somebody should ask our learfield team why we suck.
https://www.learfield.com/partner/hokies-sports-properties/
Speaking of multimedia rights - Nebraska signed a new deal for $300 million in guaranteed money over 15 years, with NIL opportunities included.
https://www.on3.com/teams/nebraska-cornhuskers/news/nebraska-closing-in-...
It very much begs the question - how in the hell is Amazon not one of our brand partners given the DC campus?
How do we not have one single commercial or investment bank that is willing to partner with us, knowing for a fact that there are a few who go out of their way to seek out our alumni for employment?
Why are all of our corporate partners small regional outfits who do not have outreach beyond SWVA? And VCOM? Good lord, one of our 6 sponsors is our own school? 🤦