re: 2023 LSU WBB won Natty but lost nearly $8M

Only 2 programs at most schools turn a profit. LSU has 3 thanks to baseball but during the 90s, even with all the NCs we lost money

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The program collected just under $2.5 million in revenues for the year but the team’s expenses were closer to $10.3 million.

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Not surprised at all. The bling bling Mulkey wears isn’t cheap. Angel’s camaro with spinners isn’t cheap either.

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An audit of LSU’s athletic department found that the organization operated with a nearly $4 million deficit last year.

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What basically were the excess transfers to institution for the 2023 fiscal year?

Definition is something like funds transferred to institution that are in excess of any direct support already received from the institution or govt to help fund the athletic program (if any direct support from university the transfers back to university first go into another line up to the amount of that direct support).

I thought it was a donation to school like in the past, but I don’t remember those putting department in a deficit for the fiscal year.

It was $5.2 million in 2023, but before this the department had a net positive of around $1.3 million.

I’m more interested in seeing how much waste LSU has. Start by cutting stupid shite like that woman they hired to hype up Tiger Stadium. A drop in the bucket but if LSU is dumb enough to spend money on that who knows what else they waste money on.

How much money does LSU get per year with the football TV contract?

Wasn't LSU basketball mentioned/interacted with a billion times on Twitter during the final last year? Hard to put a price on that for university exposure.

Consider the $8m to be Title IX defense investment.
Lower your likelihood of a Title IX lawsuit when you are losing millions on women’s basketball and sports.

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as a state run institution, there is very little they can "not report"

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It’s not so much that they don’t report it, but TAF has separate financial statements from the athletic department. TAF’s fiscal year is also different, making it harder to align the two on paper.

The only thing from TAF that gets reported by the LSU AD is money directly transferred from TAF to the university. This changes year-to-year based on needs - so if the university has a lot of projects/buyouts funded by TAF, the TAF “contributions” will be higher. But when TAF transfers to the university are lower, it doesn’t necessarily mean TAF is making less money. So the waters are muddy.

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only a handful of athletic departments in the entire country actually turn a profit.

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A lot depends on how you choose to define “profit” in this context. Public universities don’t have true profits. So how do you define whether an AD is operating in the red or in the black?

In general, all major athletic departments are going to invest most (if not all) excess revenue back into the programs in the form of facilities, staff, or whatever. In general you would expect to have years with excess revenue balanced out by years with a loss.

To me the real metric is whether the AD receives funding from the university itself. In LSU’s case, we do not. In fact the AD had a $1.3M surplus before you factor in the $5.2M the AD transferred back to the university. Which is why I find it a little funny that folks are talking about the AD as a whole (not just WBB) “losing money.”

I love Kim Mulkey, but this is the story of women’s sports. They are basically irrelevant because of lack of interest (even from other women).