re: College Sports "Big 5"

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this board is biased in favor of baseball because we've been so good for decades. But outside of a handful of universities, college baseball is nothing

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It’s interesting how so many here live in their LSU bubble. Nationwide, college baseball is barely a blip on the radar.

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I would argue that men’s basketball isn’t even top three overall, at least not right now.

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Men’s basketball at LSU, currently, is probably #5, sadly

What is the most populated demographic in Atlanta, Ga.?

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2023 Revenue:

Baseball: $4,037,550

Men’s basketball: $2,546,914

Try again

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you're completely ignoring over $30 million in revenue from SEC distributions, probably including TV deals, March Madness money, etc..

"In the 2023 fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2023, Louisiana State University's (LSU) men's basketball team generated just over $12 million in revenue, up from $11.5 million in 2022."

Baseball doesn't have anywhere near the TV deal money that basketball has. That's where the real revenue is.

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LSU football made $105.7 million for the athletic department last school year, turning out a $54 million profit. The only other sport in the athletic department to earn a profit was men's basketball, which made $1.34 million.

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That’s a bit misleading, at best. At worst it’s flat out wrong.

TL;DR - the quoted statement is based on incomplete information which doesn’t even actually directly account for baseball’s revenue contributions, and I believe baseball revenues and profits likely exceed men’s basketball by quite a bit.

The data source being used for that quote is the Louisiana Legislative Auditor report. That report does indeed show that the men’s basketball program had $1.34 million in revenue over expenses. However, the only categories broken out on the LLA report are “football,” “men’s basketball,” “women’s basketball,” “other sports,” and “non-program specific.” In other words, the LLA report doesn’t actually address whether baseball turned a profit at LSU.

If you want that information you have to look at LSU’s financial report, which says the following:

Basketball - Men’s
Revenue: $2,546,914
Revenue Over Expenditures: $(6,567,892)

Baseball
Revenue: $4,037,540
Revenue Over Expenditures: $(2,166,816)

So LSU’s financial report says:
1. That baseball brings in about $1.5 million (59%) more in revenue than men’s basketball.
2. That both sports lose money, but men’s basketball loses about $4.4 million more than baseball.

The difference is that LSU’s financial report does not allocate media rights or distributions by sport (along with several other revenue streams). Which, to be quite honest, makes sense as many revenue sources (example: SEC Network deal) can’t be entirely allocated to a specific sport.

It appears to me that the revenue sources allocated to basketball in the LLA report that are not allocated in the LSU report are probably:
- Contributions
- In-Kind
- Media Rights
- NCAA Distributions
- Conference Distributions

If you add these up on the LLA report it’s $9,484,951. When added to the LSU-reported revenue, that would bring total for basketball to $12,031,865 - the exact number on the LLA report.

Here’s the problem though: if you add up the totals for those categories in the “other sports” column, it’s an additional $6.7 million in revenue. But it’s actually way more than that because the LLA report doesn’t list any “media rights” under “other sports.” They only show it under “non-program specific” at a whopping $26.9 million.

In other words, for the $9.5 million in revenue that the LLA report adds to men’s basketball, there is an additional $33.6 million attributable to all the other sports (like baseball) that aren’t broken out in the report.

Since we know that baseball is by far the biggest sport at LSU outside of football, MBB, and WBB (considering baseball revenue on LSU’s report exceeds MBB and WBB combined, and is nearly 10x the next highest sport) it stands to reason that the majority of “other” revenue is baseball revenue.

So I would argue that if baseball were broken out on the LLA report like basketball then the revenue and profit would exceed men’s basketball, and I don’t think it would be particularly close either.

/TED Talk