2023 ACC Athletic Department budgets compared (Updated with Big10 and SEC)

Using the Knight report data I compared the 8 + Cal ACC schools that report their data (all dollar amounts below are in the millions of dollars).

The numbers differ per schools with Cal and UVA being the big outliers here with ~33 athletes per sport. UNC also has a large number of sports and athletes. VT is right with all the other schools in number of sports and athletes per sport, though is on the high side of the middle of the curve.

What really stands out to me is just how differently we get our money that most. We are a huge outlier on Corporate funding/Advertising/Licensing. We need another $10 mil to be competitive in this realm. UofL is an outlier here too as they have shitty pizza money.

Clemson and FSU really rely on their donors, UVA does get a large chunk from donors too.

VT relies on media rights much more than any one not named NC State.

While our ticket sales are percentage (of revenue) wise aligned with most of the conference, we have the smallest revenue after NC State. If we made more money other places and didn't see ticket sales rise then we would be in the Cal, GT, UVA range for ticket revenue.

If you look at the total revenue per sport and athlete then Clemson averages $10 mil per sport while no one else is above $8.5 mil. VT is right in the middle of revenue per number of sports. When you include athletes then VT is on the high side of the middle, so we do well, but we aren't Clemson or FSU. GT is higher because of so few sports and UofL barely higher due to their garlic sauce money.

The gov't/student fees (which covers money that comes give to the AD by the university) at UVA are bad, but Cal really relies on them. VT is also high for Fees, but that would decrease in percentage of income if we got other revenue. We can look at the number of student fees per student too:

As expected, Cal and UVA are very high, UNC and GT jump out. VT is actually not that costly. If VT received what UVA received from the university per student we'd have an extra $26.8 million a year.

If we look at spending we see the following:

The big thing that I saw is that we spent $13 mil less than what we made in 2023. If you look closer we had the smallest game expenses which will fluctuate every year and will only go up with west coast travel. But any one talking of cuts in the department makes no sense unless we need that money for the new NIL legislation. We also spent ~$20 mil less than everyone else, (not named NC State) again add another 5-8 mil because our travel was favorable this year, but we still are behind.

Other interesting notes ...
UNC doctors must be the best because they cost a fortune. That or they have way to many injuries and need better trainers.
VT is at the low end of recruiting with only FSU spending less, which some how is more amazing to me than VT not spending.

GT is doing something odd with facilities and equipment, they are WAY higher than everyone else. UVA is 2nd which is also odd but I guess olympic sports equipment and facility rentals add up?

VT is 2nd worst in Coaches pay, but GT is way down there, even with less sports they are a big outlier. Do the coaches own the athletic facilities and charge more to funnel money for tax purposes? GT also feels like the highest cost of living compared to the rest (well maybe Cal).

Support/Admin/Severance includes paying coaches not to coach, so this is where Fuente's pay is and guess what, we're really low. This means we don't have enough support staff or we need to fire underperforming coaches more.

Now lets look at student compensation (note dollars are in dollars and not millions):

Only Clemson and GT spend significate amounts more than VT.

If you look at coaching pay per sport:

Everyone is paying about the same for coaches except Clemson. VT is on the lower end of coaching pay per sport though. But VT really takes a hig are support staff. UVA is the big outlier paying WAY less than everyone but VT is barely 3rd from the bottom. Now not paying serverence to bad coaches helps, but other than FSU, not a lot of the conference is paying coaches not to coach. Well only FSU is paying coaches not to coach, no one else has been dumb enough to pay multiple coaches not to coach to the same sport.

This is just in the ACC, Big 10 and SEC are going to look different. But we are 7th in revenue and 9th in spending in the ACC (both those are out of 9). Overall we aren't that far from being in the upper 3rd for most of theses numbers, but we are still in the bottom 3rd for most of them. I will look at those on a later date.

Overall, VT needs to get more corporate sponsors, improve licensing deals, get donors to donate more and then spend that on recruiting, coaches pay and admin pay. Dropping sports doesn't look like it will help because we would still be on the low side to everything. It's not going to make up the $57 million difference in donations that Clemson gets. GT has less sports and I am not sure any one wants to be in their shoes right now. I will say it again, the entire university needs to be working to make more money for sports. The academic side needs to improve to get more students that make more money to donate more. The research needs to improve to spin off into new companies that pay for advertising and have rich VT grad owners. The landscaping crew needs to keep VT looking gorgeous for recruits to visit. The town needs more unique places like Mikes and the Farmhouse to make people want to comeback and spend their money. We need world class medical staff and doctors in town to treat sports injuries.

Updated section !!!!

TIme to get wierd (also i didnt think i could get this done this early so thank my daughters friends for sleepover invites)

The SEC and Big10 do things a bit differently when it comes to earning money:

One note: the Big 10 has 3 Pac12 schools in the data so there will be about a $4 mil increase into the media rights when they make Big 10 money (or when they take a 75% cut and the other 25% goes to other big 10 schools)

Everyone in the Big 10 doubles our corporate intake. The SEC is the same except LSU which is only $3.6 million which is really odd and a huge outlier. As everyone else is about $7.7 million with most being north of $10 mil. I believe this is a bigger issue that anything now because everyone is doing it way better than us. Mizzou is at $8.4!

Donations is very interesting as the ACC and Big 10 are about the same. The SEC beats the pants off both of them. The difference between the Big 10 and SEC revenue is donations. There is a difference in media rights between conference but it's not as big as I thought it would be. Ticket sales make up a big portion of the difference in the conference earnings. Every single ACC team earns less in ticket sales than the average Big 10 team, which is $7 million less than the average SEC team. Now ACC stadiums are smaller than Big 10 and SEC, but the SEC stadiums aren't double the ACC stadiums on this list (though they might have double the attendance, looking at you UVA). Only Rutgers, UMd, MissSt, and Mizzou earn less from tickets and those are not the schools I want to be associated with.

The other large outlier is the ACC uses student fees and other funding from the universities that doesn't exist in other conferences. The Big 10 and SEC have odd outliers in their conferences like Rutgers at $26 mil, UMd at $17 mil, Auburn at $35 mil and Mizzou at $24 mil but overall average $8.5 million less from the universities.

Overall the difference between the ACC and Big 10 is media rights and ticket sales, while the the SEC adds more ticket sales and lots more donations on top.

SEC Revenue

BIG10 Revenue

Nebraska leading the way in donations is a little surprise but also not at the same time. However, Wisconsin at $51 million is way more than I would have guessed based on VTs numbers or the average Big10 numbers.

UCLA being at $105 is insanely low to me.

I can see why Saban wanted donors to donation all the time because they are behind the curve being closer to middle of the pack.

Kentucky media rights and tickets are really high but not as insane as Arkansas tickets. They've been pretty bad at football and yet sell tickets like no other.

Now to see how spending happens

Well I did the Big 10 first and saw that it's not that different from the ACC except they spend a fortune on facilities. I thought GT was the outlier but they are the norm. The ACC appears to be behind in coaching pay, admin/support/serverence pay, and facilities/equipment.

The SEC also spends 50% more on recruiting than the Big10 and SEC. I was suprised the ACC and Big10 spent the same, especially with so many more great recruiting areas were local to the ACC unlike the Big 10.

The SEC and Big 10 also spend on opponents more than the ACC. I think this makes sense because a while ago I posted data showing that the ACC played more P5 OOC teams that any other conference and the SEC was 2nd, but the rest didn't really come close. And knowing how much the SEC teams make, I would be asking for a bigger payout to play SEC team than ACC team.

The other interesting thing is the SEC makes about $10 million per team while the ACC makes $4 million. However, the Big10 loses $1 million a year.

Now the question I have is that since the ACC has smaller venues they have smaller ticket sales but also less facilities costs. They are $15 less in facilities/equipment but are $11 and $18 less in ticket sales. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of venue size and attendance to see if there is ROI to making bigger venues.

SEC Spending:

Big 10 Spending

I find the medical outliers interesting, I am wondering if they are doing things differently and paying for more advanced sports medicine treatments.

A couple other things to note are the differences in number of sports, the ACC and Big10 are close in numbers but the SEC has less more and less athletes per sport. One other odd take away is that I didn't realize how big most Big10 schools were. VT has more attendance than only Iowa, Oregon, and Nebraska, two of which were original Big 10 schools. The SEC has a lot more variance in their numbers as A&M is huge and Ole Miss is tiny, like they make UVA feel good about their size tiny.

Because the SEC has less sports we get soem interesting numbers:

The ACC actually spends more than the Big10 on each athlete, while the SEC spends 10% more than the ACC.

Now looking at the number of sports the coaches pay that looked close between SEC and Big10 looks way different as each sport has over $400k more to spend. Same goes for admins too.

The other thing that looks off is the differnce in coach vs admin numbers. The ACC should be paying more admin support costs when compared to the coaches pay.

Overall the conference do things all a bit differently. If you think we need more donations then you are looking at the SEC. However, media rights and ticket sales are two places the ACC lacks.

VT has a lot of ground to make up in many of the catagories, but honestly if the ACC can increase its advertising, increase ticket sales (looking at you UVA), and not have as much profit, they could really decrease the gap with the Big10. Another 5 mil in advertising and 5 mil in tickets and then spending $4 mil more of the profits would put them at basically a $9 million less difference than the Big10, but the ACC also has $15 million less in facility and equipment cost so the $6 million difference could allow the ACC to outspend the big 10 where it counts. It really isn't as bleak as lots think, but the conference and the schools have to start selling, get butts in seats and produce a good product.