Texas reported athletic department revenue of $271 million in 2023, a record for NCAA schools

The University of Texas athletics program – always among the nation’s most financially powerful – again has gone to another level: It had just over $271 million in operating revenue during its 2023 fiscal year, according to its new annual revenue-and-expenses report to the NCAA.

The report, which USA TODAY obtained the report Wednesday through an open-records request in partnership with the Knight-Newhouse Data project at Syracuse University, means that Texas increased its revenue by nearly $32 million over the total it reported for 2022.

For now, the new total stands as the largest single-year total since the NCAA began its current financial reporting system in 2005. Ohio State reported $251.6 million in 2022. (Oregon reported $391.8 million in 2020, but that included more than $270 million as a contribution for the renovation of its track and field stadium.)

By category, Texas’ largest year-over-year increases were:

-- $11 million in contributions, which rose to nearly $86 million.

-- $10.2 million in money from sponsorships, licensing, royalties and advertising, which totaled $54.7 million.

-- $5.7 million in ticket sales, which moved to $63.3 million.

"We’re very fortunate that we have an incredible fan base that supports our athletic program and loves our great institution,” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said Wednesday. “We’re very, very proud of our athletic program, and the support of our institution is second to none.”

Del Conte said the biggest reasons for the increase in revenue were the school’s first year in its new arena, the Moody Center, “an incredible job by our development team” in restricted and unrestricted gifts and the first year of a new local media-rights agreement with Learfield.

Texas credited its football program with $183 million in operating revenue for 2023 and a $122 million surplus over operating expenses.

Schools had to provide their 2023 reports to the NCAA by Monday, and, so far, only a few schools have released them. Penn State, LSU and Tennessee all have reported exceeding $200 million for the first time – but those totals trailed Texas’ by about $70 million.

Texas will be joining LSU and Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference this summer.

Kansas State, which currently is in the Big 12 Conference with Texas, has reported $102.3 million in revenue for 2023.

During the 2022 fiscal year, of the more than 233 Division I public schools for which financial reports could be obtained, 181 had overall athletics department revenue totals that were lower than Texas’ fundraising total for 2023.

Texas has already raised the money needed to finance a new indoor football facility, a cost estimated to run between $80 million and $90 million. Texas will break ground on the project in June, a task that will take two years.

"That tells us we have a very passionate fan base,” Del Conte said.

Del Conte said that the ongoing 2024 fiscal year should be better than last year,” Del Conte said. “The only difference is how much developmental money we raise. We have room to grow.”

Texas sold out its allotment of almost 68,000 football season tickets, not including the 18,000 tickets reserved for students, and has also sold out season tickets for men’s basketball, baseball and softball.

"We’re pretty locked in,” Del Conte said.

When Texas moves to the SEC, its income from conference revenue sharing eventually will be significantly higher than it has been with the Big 12. The financial reports that schools file with the NCAA do not provide a precise figure for the total amount of money they receive from their respective conferences.

But based on Texas’ report and the Big 12’s most recently available tax records, which provide school-by-school distributions for the 2022 fiscal year, Texas likely received $42 million to $45 million from the Big 12 in the 2023 fiscal year.

Under its entry agreement with the SEC, Texas will not be a full participant in SEC revenue sharing until the 2025-26 school year. But with the SEC also adding Oklahoma and beginning a new football TV contract with ESPN in the 2024-25 academic year, it seems likely that Texas’ annual share from the SEC eventually will be at least $20 million more than it has been getting from the Big 12.

In the meantime, it also will be collecting money from ESPN for the wind-down of the parties’ agreement that had created the Longhorn Network; the rights to the sports events the Longhorn Network has been showing will convey to the SEC, and, in turn, to the ESPN-owned SEC Network.

In 2023, on the spending side, Texas reported operating expenses of just over $232 million for its 20-team program. (By comparison, Ohio State has 33 teams.)

The overall spending figure does not take into account an additional $1.6 million that Texas’ athletics department reported transferring to the institution. That is down from a $2.1 million transfer in 2022.

Not adjusting for inflation, the athletics department reported transfers of $9.8 million to $10.8 million from 2015 through 2018.

From 2019 through 2021, the transfer ranged from $3.2 million to $6.8 million.

Texas’ athletics operating spending increased by about $7.2 million in 2023, compared to its spending in 2022.

It showed year-over-year increases in areas including scholarships; compensation for support staff and administrators; team travel; appearance guarantees to opponents; the cost of staging events; and spending on fundraising and marketing.

It showed year-over-year decreases in areas including severance payments and the cost of overhead and other administrative expenses.