Which College Sports Make the Most Money? (2024)

FAQs

What college makes the most money from sports? ›

The Ohio State University tops the list of biggest sports money-makers.

Higher Education is a “United Fund” Non-Profit System

Only 28 of these intercollegiate athletic programs generated more revenues than expenses in 2021-22 and 98.6 percent had operating losses covered by institutions using tuition and mandatory activity fee dollars generated from all students.

NCAA Generates Nearly $1.3 Billion in Revenue for 2022-23. Division I Payouts Reach $669 Million.

1. Oregon Ducks ($969 million) Nike founder Phil Knight is the primary reason the Ducks have one of the nicest football facilities in the country. Knight, a university alumnus, has given more than $1 billion back to Oregon over the past two decades.

NFL vs College Profits

In 2021, NFL teams produced $18B in revenue and walked away with over $4B in profit after expenses. Looking at the 32 college football teams with the highest margins in 2021 we get… The NFL looks to have a much larger margin when compared to college teams, but it's not as wide as it may look.

Ohio State - $251 million

Ohio State is on top when it comes to revenue with $251 million brought in, the only school to have over $250 million in revenue. They also had $225 million in expenses.

Of available data, a total of 18 of 229 public Division I athletics programs generated more money than they spent in 2020. This ranged from a whopping $270 million profit (thank you for the gift, Nike co-founder Phil Knight) at the University of Oregon to a massive $48.2 million deficit at James Madison University.

Men's basketball and football traditionally earn the lowest graduation rates among all sports. Since the NCAA first began tracking the Graduation Success Rate with student-athletes who entered college in 1995, the rate has increased 8 percentage points.

Which colleges spend the most on football? ›

The NCAA distributes its revenues to member schools after paying its operating expenses, with $682 million going to member schools in 2022. We note that the Pac-12 Conference's 2022 operating expenses equaled 20.4% of revenue compared to an average of 6.7% of revenue for the other four major conferences.

USA Today reveals that Grand Canyon University has had the largest five-year increase in applications of any American college.

Among the biggest alumni networks for U.S. colleges are the previously mentioned Penn State and Indiana University, as well as the University of California and both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Penn State boasts the largest alumni numbers of them all, with almost 760,000 living alumni.

University of Florida

#1 Best College Athletics in America.

NBA. NBA generates huge sums of money yearly – from sponsorship rights to income generated from NBA odds. Basketball is the highest-paid sport in the world, with an average annual NBA salary in 2023 of nearly $10.5 million. The league has over 30 teams and pays the highest player salary of $48 million.

The College Sports Revenue Generating Landscape

The schools generate direct revenues from ticket sales, merchandise, donations and other sources. Schools are organized into athletic conferences that generate their own direct revenues from TV broadcast contracts and tournaments, then distribute money to schools.