Unpacking Penn State Athletics' latest fiscal report
Guess what, football is expensive
Penn State athletics recently released its latest fiscal report which - for the sake of placing this in your mind - represents Drew Allar’s first season as a starter and Mike Rhoades’ first season at Penn State. The fiscal year runs June to June.
The PDF itself is 90 pages long and consists of the best and most transparent look underneath the hood of the athletic department each year. You can read lots of them here. Like all things accounting, there is some degree of moving the same money around to different buckets each year, but for the most part you can get the overall vibe of how things are going.
There are endless insights to take from this document each year, but here are a few big ticket items.
Revenue increase outpaces expenses:
Penn State saw an increase in revenue from its last report of $18.5 million with an increase in expenses of $13.03 million. In total Penn State athletics operated with a revenue total of $220,758,927 and an operating expenses total of $215,108,075.
The end result sees Penn State athletics finishing the year with a positive cash flow of $5.6 million, a significant bump up from a figure of $126,352 the year prior. For comparison, Ohio State was in the negative nearly $40 million.
Where did that come from?
Revenue Growth (+$18.56 million)
Overall Ticket Sales: *This figure includes additional value not shown in chart below.
2022-23: $47,936,612
2024: $50,557,204
Increase: $2,620,592
Media Rights:
2022-23: $40,137,387
2024: $42,135,642
Increase: $1,998,255
Program, Novelty, Parking, and Concession Sales: The first full season of alcohol sales in Beaver Stadium.
2022-23: $10,616,639
2024: $15,225,413
Increase: $4,608,774
Other Operating Revenue: “Input any operating revenues received by athletics in the report year which cannot be classified into one of the stated categories.”
2022-23: $20,104,552
2024: $32,416,733
Increase: $12,312,181
Ticket sale breakdown:
Football continues to be the driver of revenue for Penn State athletics and ticket sales continue to be the main backbone of that. The total of $44.45 million is up from $41.89 million the year prior.
A few other charts:
Contributions were down roughly $3 million.
Recruiting:
Operating Revenues:
Operating Expenses:
Penn State football works out to around +$50 million.
With the onset of changing NIL legislation, revenue sharing, media rights and the expanded playoffs it will be another year or two before we get a sense of how these changes are impacting Penn State. That said, this report offers a pretty good starting point for future reference.