Because I have nothing better going on tonight, and mainly because former podcast guest StateCollege.com’s Ben Jones alerted my and your attention to it, I decided to scroll through Penn State athletics’ 2022-23 financial report.
Thrilling. I know.
But clearly you’re interested in this because you clicked on this article.
Anyways, here are some interesting numbers that stood out to me on my journey through this 90-page document that was prepared by Penn State Athletics Senior Associate AD for Finance and Business Operations Richard Kaluza. We salute you and your number crunching, Rick.
Also for context, this is the season that included Penn State’s trip to the Rose Bowl and trip to the NCAA Tournament in men’s hoops. We won’t get this year’s numbers until next year obviously.
(Doing this bullet point style because it’s probably easier to digest since it’s a lot of numbers. You can follow along here.)
Revenue
- Where does Penn State’s money come from? Well, tickets sales, television deals and “contributions.” Contributions are essentially the Nittany Lion Club donation you pay on top of your Penn State football or any other sports season tickets. Those three numbers combined make up $128M of its $202M in revenue. (More on that later)
Tickets Sales
- Penn State made $47.9M in ticket sales from all of its sports. The top three? Football at $41M, men’s hockey at $2.1M and men’s basketball at $1.7M.
- Wrestling sold about $1.6M worth of tickets.
- Interestingly, Penn State saw a $1.1M increase in men’s basketball ticket sales year over year. See what happens when you have a decent basketball program?
- Penn State women’s hockey tickets sales went from $14k to $21.7k year over year. Women’s hockey is growing in general so this is nice to see.
- Penn State men’s lacrosse ticket sales went from $7.9k to $18.8k year over year.
Other interesting revenue notes
- TV revenue from football and basketball equates to about $40M. ($34M via the football contract from the Big Ten.)
- Penn State made $10M in concessions, parking and novelties in 2022-23. Why does that matter? Well as Ben Jones pointed out, Penn State saw an increase of $1.7M in that category, which for the first time includes beer sales. Beer sales were turned on in the Northwestern game in Oct. 2022 and if we do some back of napkin math, assuming each beer costs $11, that equals 162k beers sold. (Obviously it doesn’t actually equal that but it’s fun math).
- Penn State made more in concessions and novelties at women’s volleyball games ($21K) than it did at men’s basketball games ($15k).
- But back to the beer, if I’m Pat Kraft, I’m knocking on every door, begging every politician and doing everything I can to try to get beer sales in Pegula Ice Arena, the Bryce Jordan Center and Rec Hall permanently.
- Penn State made $14M in advertising in 2022-23.
- How much did Penn State make for making the Rose Bowl? About $3.3M.
Total revenue: $202,200,203 (keep that number in mind for later)
Expenses
- What costs the most for Penn State to run its athletic department? Well, salaries of course. But it’s not the coaches’ salaries. “Support staff/administrative compensation” is $39M of Penn State’s operating costs. Coaches salaries cost $38M. And student tuition plus room and board costs Penn State $23M in 2022-23.
- Penn State’s 85 football scholarships cost $5,677,630.
- Penn State’s women’s hockey scholarship, which are not necessarily all full rides but still spread out over 25 athletes, cost $1.2M. That takes up the second most.
- Back to those coaching salaries, Penn State spent $21.7M on head coaching salaries with some of that split over sports like fencing that share a coach. Now, of course, James Franklin makes the most around $7M.
- Once we remove Franklin’s salary, that still leaves $10M for men’s team’s head coaches while women’s team’s cost around $3.9M. Penn State is only required to release the salaries of its football coach and men’s basketball coach so we don’t have specifics for the other coaches but Shrewsberry made just north of $1.5M, according to their Right to Know paperwork.
- How much does it cost for travel for Penn State sports? Roughly $10.8M. About $1.6M of that expense is for football while $1.4M of that is for men’s basketball. That number is important to keep an eye on as the Big Ten expands from coast to coast. That we won’t know until the report comes out in 2026. (I know you’re also counting down the days).
- Penn State spends $5.2M on athletic equipment.
- Penn State spent about $17M on facilities in 2022-23.
- How much does it cost to feed Penn State’s student athletes? $2M.
- By the way, Penn State spent $4.4M to go to the Rose Bowl. Now, between the bowl payout and the all-in bowl payout, Penn State turned a profit on that trip but still.
- Now Penn State paid out $1.6M in severance with $64K (likely Pat Chambers) of that going to basketball and $492k (likely Kirk Ciarrocca) of that going to football with the remaining $1M unattributed. My guess is some of that is also going to those guys and other people around Penn State.
Total expense: $202,073,671
So Did Penn State Make Money?
Yes. A whopping $126,352.
In Beaver Stadium beers, that’s 11,486.
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