The NCAA ended the 2023 fiscal year with $1.3 billion in revenue and $870 million in net assets, according to a copy of the association’s audited financial statement. Those record-setting figures were reached on account of the NCAA’s investment portfolio, which enjoyed a reported increase of nearly $63 million in FY23 after losing $72.3 million the previous fiscal year.
As of Aug. 31, 2023, the NCAA had $815.3 million of financial assets available within one year of the balance sheet, based on meeting $45.8 million in cash needs, $29.6 million in accounts receivable and its investments.
Even still, this might not be close to the amount of money necessary to bail college sports’ governing body out of its current predicament.
The NCAA, while being increasingly at odds with the interests of its most powerful members, faces multiple antitrust lawsuits, filed by classes of current and former college players, who are collectively seeking billions of dollars in damages. This week, the attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia joined the growing roster of anti-NCAA plaintiffs, with a new antitrust lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s role in restricting what and how collegiate athletes can earn money from their name, image and likeness.
Public criticism from some of its most powerful members is a tough precedent for the NCAA, despite the record revenue. “In short, the NCAA is failing,” Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman wrote Monday in a letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker.
An NCAA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The association has typically publicized its financial statements, which are prepared at the end of December, but had yet to do so for its most recent one. The document, however, was posted Thursday on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s electronic market access database.
The NCAA reported $1.12 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019, then just $519 million in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The income bounced back to $1.16 billion in 2021 (the organization’s prior record), before falling slightly to $1.14 billion in 2022.
Revenue from the NCAA’s media rights jumped slightly to $945.1 million, from $940 million, likely due to escalators in existing contracts. The biggest, of course, is the long-standing deal with Turner and CBS for the men’s basketball tournament. The NCAA is in the final year of a 14-year deal that pays $10.8 billion. Next year, it will begin a new extension, announced in 2016, that will pay $8.8 billion from 2025-2032. (A small portion of that deal has already been pre-paid). The organization’s new ESPN deal for the other major championships is not reflected in the numbers for fiscal 2023.
This fiscal year also marked the end of the NCAA’s insurance payouts due to COVID. The organization was one of the few major sports entities to have pre-set coverage when the pandemic hit. It received $270 million in 2020, $81 million in 2021, and $17 million in 2022. It reported $0 in 2023, coinciding with the launch of its own insurance subsidiary, called the 1910 Collective LLC, which was seeded with a one-time payment. The subsidiary ended the year with reserves of $175.8 million, up from $100.5 million in 2022.
The NCAA and NIT championships and tournaments also proved more lucrative in FY23, bringing in $222 million in revenue compared with $199 million the previous fiscal year.
On the expense side of its ledger, the NCAA reported distributing $670 million to its Division I members (up from $657 in FY22) and spending $192 million on its D-I championships programs and NIT tournament ($170 million in FY22).
