The economics of winning championships: How Georgia is profiting, what it will do with it (2024)

ATHENS, Ga. — When it comes to bean counting and big ideas, this would seem to be the ideal time for Georgia’s athletic department. The football team is coming off two straight championships, and happy fans have looser wallets. The major facility projects for that football program have wound down, seeming to free up all that new revenue for new priorities.

That’s partly the case. But only partly.

Georgia announced Wednesday that its revenue for the 2021-22 fiscal year — covering the first national championship season — was $203 million, up considerably from $179 million in the last pre-COVID fiscal year. (It was $169 million the COVID year, with the help of the SEC’s one-time $30 million payment to each school to offset COVID.)

So yes, there is a championship dividend. All that merchandise, including T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers? Georgia’s licensing revenue was $7 million for the 2021-22 fiscal year, which Georgia athletics CFO Stephanie Ransom said was a “significant increase.” The program also saw a heavy increase in donations, raising an all-time record $86.4 million and trending to surpass that in the current year.

But the department says it only has a real surplus of about $287,000. That’s much less than it appears on the financial report filed to the NCAA, which would be $34 million. Athletic director Josh Brooks said that’s because the NCAA doesn’t count several key items, most notably $25.7 million in capital project expenditures.

“I wish we had a $34 million surplus,” Brooks said.

Still, Brooks didn’t dispute that Georgia is pulling in a lot of money, with the revenue from the just-released report sure to be similar for the current fiscal year, considering football success. Add in that the capital project expenditures would seem to be lesser in the future, since the Butts-Mehre football and athletic department expansion recently was completed, and it’s easy to think the department is about to be flush with money.

Brooks, however, pointed out that Georgia is already in the midst of facility projects for other teams. He launched a capital campaign last year, aiming to raise $300 million during the next five years to help all programs, using football as a launching point to help the program as a whole.

And he acknowledged the importance of not falling behind in football. So Brooks sees this new revenue as a chance to be smart with money.

“I do feel like these next five years are going to give us an opportunity to catch up in some key areas,” Brooks said. “What we want to do with the tennis indoor (facility), the ongoing work with Sanford (Stadium), getting baseball and softball improvements. I’d like to get to a point where we’re not catching anymore, we’re moving ahead in facilities. Facilities are obviously always going to be important. You’ve always got a list of things you’d like to attack, it’s just a matter of prioritizing it. And you work that list.”

There are also new expenditures in this age of football. Payments to all student-athletes for education-related expenses, so-called “Alston payments” coming out of the Supreme Court ruling, amounted to a little more than $3 million last year.

There also have been raises for coaches, with Kirby Smart’s annual salary going from just more than $7 million to just more than $11 million. Brooks also got a raise last year, from $800,000 to $855,000, and it will go up to $940,000 on July 1 and then $1.03 million per year later. That’s still on the lower end of SEC athletic directors, more than half of whom make at least $1 million.

There was a $3.2 million buyout for firing Tom Crean as men’s basketball coach.

Inflation also has had an impact, whether it’s in team travel, meals or other things that have impacted team budgets. The increased cost of construction also has delayed some ongoing projects, such as Foley Field.

And not all donations immediately go into the program’s coffers: Brooks said all $34 million of the donations last fiscal year to the Magill Society — the program’s elite fundraising arm — went directly to capital projects.

Still, Georgia (like most if not all in college athletics) is back to pre-COVID revenue and operating levels, Brooks confirmed. Revenue for SEC programs also will go up when the new television deal with Disney comes into effect next year, especially if it coincides with Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC.

The championship divide is most prominent when looking at past Georgia financial reports: For the 2016-17 fiscal year, the first of the Smart era, Georgia reported revenue at $123.8 million. The next year, after the unexpected run to the national championship game, it spiked to $176.7 million. While a good chunk of that was fundraising for facilities (principally the Sanford Stadium West end zone project) it wasn’t all due to that.

Revenue stayed in that area during the next few years, then spiked again after the first national championship. A month ago came the second title.

“I always talk about direct return on investment and indirect return on investment,” Brooks said. “Direct, you see contributions go up, multimedia rights because we play in more postseason games, and there’s some escalators in multimedia contracts and licensing from all the championship apparel. So you see that immediate, direct return on investment. Then I always talk about indirect return, where you’re building some lifelong fans, that 10-year-old who has now witnessed two national championships and is going to be a Georgia fan the rest of his life. That’s the long term.”

(Top photo of Kirby Smart, left, and Stetson Bennett: Jeffrey Vest / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Seth Emerson is a senior writer for The Athletic covering Georgia and the SEC. Seth joined The Athletic in 2018 from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and also covered the Bulldogs and the SEC for The Albany Herald from 2002-05. Seth also covered South Carolina for The State from 2005-10. Follow Seth on Twitter @SethWEmerson