Winning a championship can bring an extra $300,000 or more in royalties from the lucrative college sports merchandising business. But just a trip to the NCAA tournament brings only a tenth of that payday.
Thirty-thousand dollars. That’s about what the University of Connecticut will not make this year in merchandise royalties because its vaunted men’s basketball team failed to qualify for the NCAA tournaments.
A Withering Wallet
That estimate, from Tim Tolokan, the university’s royalties czar, is based on the past experience of how much money the men’s team made in the last three seasons, including its 2004 National Championship.
Conversely: Although the UConn women’s team holds a number one seed in its tournament, won the Big East tournament and plays its first two rounds in Hartford, the Husky women will win only about $10,000 to $15,000 in royalties, if they do not win the Big Dance. Of course, if they do win, a championship could bring $100,000 or more in royalties.
Big Bucks
Royalties from officially licensed UConn merchandise like T-shirts, sweatshirts and hats, brought in over $500,000 to the school last year, and nearly $700,000 the year before. Back in 2004, when both the men’s and women’s teams won the national championship, merchandise revenue brought in nearly $1.1 million, about three-quarters of that from the men’s team’s product sales
Since all of that money goes to scholarships anyway, it’s not as though the school’s in any financial danger — it’s just a missed bonus. But it’s a fact that underscores the lopsided economics of college sports merchandising: A world where a winning men’s team adds significant value to a school, a winning women’s team adds far less and the only stakes worth playing for a championship trophy.
Championship Revenues
Most of the big profits earned in 2004 came after the NCAA championship. In the run up to it, sales of merchandise at games, UConn men’s team merchandise brought in about $70,000; the women’s team only about $11,000. And barely any of that came in the first two rounds of the tournament – conceivably where this year’s middling men’s team probably would have exited if they’d made it past Selection Sunday.
And while the school can expect a big boom if the women win it all this year, it still will pale in comparison with what might have been. Even so, said Tolokan: “The faucet is definitely off this season.”
