The NCAA’s Role in College Basketball This Division I men’s tournament generates around $820 million of its yearly income, primarily through television and marketing rights. The remaining $1.5 billion comes from the sale of merchandise and tickets. In addition, corporate suites at most basketball arenas sell for as much as $100,000 per year.
College basketball players are some of the best-paid athletes in sports. According to an industry report by Forbes, current and former NBA players make an average of $5 million a season. That makes them the highest paid team sport stars, ahead of NFL players who earn an average of $3.8 million.
The total value of the college basketball market is estimated to be about $750 million. The number of fans watching college basketball games is estimated to be about 15 million people. Advertising on college basketball broadcasts brings in approximately $150 million annually.
The largest audience for a single game was reported to be 21.5 million people when North Carolina beat Duke 93-91 in the 2005 NCAA Tournament final. The game sold out within minutes of going on sale in February 2005. It was also seen live by another 10 million people via cable or satellite TV.
The top NCAA Division 1 institutions make around $8.5 billion in annual income, with men’s football and basketball teams accounting for 58% of that total. In other words, the value of all the merchandise sold at football games and basketball tournaments at these schools is equal to the federal income tax paid by all those students.
The number of people involved in making a college football game possible is enormous. There are more than 700 players on a typical team, plus dozens of coaches, managers, support staff, and administrators. It takes years of training and practice to be able to execute the complex plays required by modern football games.
The highest-paid athlete at any school not named Kentucky or Michigan is probably Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, who was reported to have made $1.5 million last season. The second-highest-paid player at an average school was Texas defensive end Bradly Joiner, who made $940,000.
Even highly recruited freshmen players can earn large sums of money. For example, Alabama freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was reportedly paid $4.5 million over three years to attend school there. His mother owns a car dealership in Hawaii whose profits would have been affected had her son decided to forgo his education and try to make it as a pro quarterback.
The graph depicts the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) income by section from 2012 to 2019. The NCAA made 867.53 million US dollars in income from its broadcast and marketing rights fees division in the 2019 fiscal year. This was up from 754.26 million US dollars in 2008-09, the first year for which data is available.
The vast majority of the NCAA’s revenue comes from its contract with ESPN, which pays the organization a guaranteed $70 million per season for the right to televise approximately 1,000 men’s basketball games over the course of a 10-year agreement that began in 2014-15. The remaining income comes from corporate partnerships ($125 million), media rights ($50 million), retail sales ($25 million), other sports ($10 million), and investment earnings ($5 million).
In addition to its television contract, the NCAA collects monthly licensing fees of about $2.6 million from more than 6,000 colleges and universities that have branded merchandise bearing their name or logo. These schools pay to license their names and images for use on apparel, equipment, and other products sold by commercial vendors.
The remaining income of the NCAA comes from its various funds.
Essential facts The top NCAA Division 1 institutions generate around $8.5 billion in annual revenue, with men’s football and basketball teams accounting for 58% of that total. Women’s basketball accounts for 25% of the revenue, while softball, soccer, and volleyball each account for less than 2%. Independents who don’t play football or men’s basketball can afford to be more selective about what they sponsor and how much they spend because they aren’t tied down by tuition fees or required payments to play certain games.
The highest-revenue college sport is men’s football, followed by men’s basketball, baseball, and then auto racing. Football and basketball players represent about one-third of all athletes at these schools. The other two-thirds work on their bodies in some other way during their years in college—some run track and field, others play ice hockey, etc. —but almost all of them get paid. Even so, only a small fraction of college athletes ever become professional athletes. In 2014, for example, just over 9,000 students attended Division 1 men’s basketball programs; only about 200 of them were guaranteed to make $100,000 or more per year.
The average salary of a college football player is approximately $150,000, while the average income of a men’s basketball player is $125,000.
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