🔒UConn’s re-entry into the Big East puts the state’s highest-profile sports franchise at a financial crossroads

In a near-empty luxury box overlooking Rentschler Field a couple hours before the UConn football team’s late-August season home opener, Athletic Director David Benedict stood and was frank about what he thinks is largely behind the team’s falling attendance and waning revenues in recent years.

“We have not had a winning season since 2011,” Benedict said. “It’s a long time to go without having a winning season, and you need to give your fans hope, and certainly tonight we hope to do that.”

The Huskies would later pull off a narrow 24-21 victory over New York’s Wagner College, a small liberal-arts school that plays in a second-tier football conference and ended last season with a 4-7 record. Since then, the Huskies dropped four straight games to begin the season at 1-4.

The Wagner home opener kicked off UConn athletics’ final season in the American Athletic Conference (AAC). The university announced earlier this year the Huskies will move back to the Big East, a conference that includes higher-profile basketball schools that are geographically closer to Connecticut and more natural rivals. The move, which will cost the school $17 million in AAC exit fees, does not include football, which will become an independent program for the foreseeable future.

UConn’s re-entry into the Big East puts the state’s highest-profile sports franchise at a financial crossroads.

Despite numerous national championships in men’s and women’s basketball over the years, UConn’s athletics department is a big money loser, having run a nearly $41 million deficit in 2018 alone (although two analysts said that number could be inflated depending on the accounting methods used).

Rejoining the Big East conference aims to sure up the athletic department’s finances, but don’t look for UConn sports to break even anytime soon, Benedict said.

And there are no plans to eliminate the football program, which has been UConn’s major cost center in recent years.

The conference change has numerous financial implications that will likely impact UConn sports for years to come, according to stakeholders and analysts.

If the athletics department can’t narrow its deficit, it means it will have to continue to rely more on institutional support, at a time when funding for higher education remains tenuous.

On the plus-side, the move brings UConn men’s and women’s basketball teams into a conference populated by historic rivals that should garner more fan interest. Those teams are also closer to Storrs, which will cut down travel time and costs.

On the other hand, a homeless UConn football team will now have to schedule all of its own games, and it’s unclear whether UConn’s successful basketball teams can step up as bigger revenue-generators to prop up the football program.

“There is some money in basketball, but the huge money — and particularly the huge money that schools get to control rather than the NCAA — is in football,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross.

Last year, UConn’s men’s basketball team brought in about $8.5 million in revenue, while the football team earned $19 million, according to the athletic department’s annual financial filings.

Building a schedule

UConn board of trustees member Tom Ritter, a former state lawmaker who currently works as an attorney, said he sees only benefits to the Big East move: A more competitive schedule guaranteed for its basketball program, with the opportunity for a football schedule that will draw more fans, lead to better recruitment and ultimately pull UConn football out of a decade-long rut in both on-field performance and off-field revenue-generation.

Ritter said he thinks the school’s football team is in prime position to schedule games with high-profile teams as an independent school.

“What we’re finding is that the Power Five conferences are looking for schools like UConn to fill up their schedules, and they’re willing to pay a lot of money,” Ritter said.

As an example, he noted that Clemson, last year’s college football national champion, has agreed to host UConn in 2021 and pay the school $1.2 million, which will be the largest single-game guarantee in the football program’s history.

“We’re going to go from a football school that had no rivalries in the AAC to a program that will actually bring in some revenue through some of the big schools that we’re playing,” Ritter said.

The football program, he added, will also have to focus on booking games with other independent teams, like Army, as well as nearby schools with large fan bases like Boston College and UMass.

Scheduling a full season will be a challenge, particularly next year, said Benedict.

In the AAC, UConn had eight in-conference games, and had to schedule four out-of-conference matchups in a 12-game season. UConn already scheduled its out-of-conference games for the 2020 season — with UMass, Illinois, Maine and Indiana all on the docket — but needs to find another eight games next year, when other teams are thinking about 2023 schedules.

“Really, it’s about trying to identify opportunities where someone may be interested in working with you, because maybe they’d like to change something on their schedule,” Benedict said.

Meantime, when it comes to the athletic department ever breaking even, Ritter and Benedict agree that while it’s something to aim for, it’s not realistic.

Benedict said complete financial self-sufficiency is exceedingly rare for college athletic programs, most of which are dependant on institutional contributions and student fees.

The main goal is to narrow the deficit as much as possible, he said.

According to a financial filing with the NCAA last year, UConn ran a $40.6 million deficit. That number is calculated by comparing the amount spent ($81 million) with revenues ($40.4 million), not including money provided through institutional support ($30 million) and student fees ($8.5 million)

That deficit calculation, however, may not paint a reliable picture, said Andy Schwartz, an economist at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. That’s because included in expenditures is the value of scholarships, which can significantly increase total costs, even though the school isn’t actually spending any money.

In fiscal 2015, the year before Benedict stepped in as athletic director, UConn’s total revenue without institutional contributions or student fees was about $44 million, while expenses were about $71.9 million, according to an NCAA filing. Institutional support was just under $17.9 million and student-fee revenue was $10.2 million.

Meanwhile, overall UConn athletic department ticket sales have seesawed in recent years, totaling $9.8 million in 2017, down from $11.5 million in 2010.

Hoops hopes

Basketball is a far different story from football. Since UConn announced its return to the Big East, season ticket sales have been ticking higher, Benedict said.

“There’s many people that maybe dropped their tickets that have come back, there are people that have bought more tickets, (and) there’s a bunch of new people that have never owned tickets before, that have come on board,” Benedict said. “It’s been a significant bump for us already in a very short period of time.”

Ritter said Big East conference teams will draw more fans to Storrs and Hartford’s XL Center, which will also help recruit top-tier basketball talent.

The UConn women’s basketball team last year actually sold more season tickets than the men’s team: 8,551 vs. 7,163, Benedict said.

In the 2012-2013 season — the last season UConn was in the Big East — women’s and men’s basketball sold 9,136 and 9,406 season tickets, respectively, he said, adding that he hopes to exceed those levels going forward.

So far this year, UConn has sold or renewed more than 8,000 season tickets for men’s and women’s basketball, which is slightly above sales during the same period last year.

Broadcast deal

There is also significant TV money at stake with the conference change.

Beginning July 1, when UConn officially joins the Big East, the basketball program will begin receiving payments from a 12-year, $500 million TV deal the conference signed in 2013 with Fox Sports, a Big East spokeswoman confirmed. UConn won’t receive any retroactive money, but will get payments equal to all other conference teams moving forward. The Big East would not disclose the amount of the per-school payout.

UConn is leaving behind a 12-year, $1 billion TV deal the AAC recently signed with ESPN. Benedict said that deal overall, which pays conference teams about $7 million annually, was a good one, but it left concerns about whether it would provide enough coverage of UConn’s basketball teams. ESPN will broadcast many AAC games on its new ESPN-plus digital network, which requires an additional paid subscription and currently has limited viewership.

But that TV deal had little to do with the decision to switch conferences, Benedict said.

UConn also recently signed a 15-year media deal with Learfield IMG College, which guarantees the university at least $93 million over the course of the contract, and 100 percent of the profits in the first three years.

The company has partnered with UConn athletics since 1986, and, in addition to selling corporate sponsorships and handling radio broadcasts of UConn’s games, produces the popular “Holding Court with Geno Auriemma” podcast, featuring the women’s basketball coach.

The IMG deal is an exciting one that could open up other new media opportunities, Benedict said.

But, as he prepared for the 2019 season opening football game in August, neither that, nor the Big East move were on Benedict’s mind.

At that moment, he was focused on the game and season ahead.

“What we’re focused on is this year, our final year as a member of the [AAC],” Benedict said.