The Univ. of Louisville approved a $145,031,274 budget for the FY2025, roughly $4.8M “less than” its FY2024 projected revenue and expenses, according to Brooks Holton of the Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL. Louisville AD Josh Heird said that it is a “financial plan his department can ‘live within’ while keeping one eye toward the seismic changes to college sports that are on the horizon.” Amid the uncertainty, Heird knows this much: "We're not just going to cut our way to $20 million." Though, some attrition “is to be expected.” When Sports Information Dir Zach Greenwell left last month to take a job at LSU, Heird “opted to leave his position unfilled.” Heird mentioned that to avoid layoffs and axing nonrevenue sports -- most of which are “operating on ‘lean’ budgets to begin with” -- nothing's “off the table in the department's hunt for additional funds to compensate athletes when the time comes.” Louisville “cannot afford another men's basketball season of sparse crowds at the KFC Yum! Center” after falling $1.9M short of its ticket sales goal for FY24. In steering the program back toward its former status as “one of the sport's most profitable in the country,” the athletics department is “hoping for a 30% increase in season ticket sales (to 12,000) and two ‘premium’ games at 90% capacity -- one nonconference and one during ACC play.” The proposed FY25 men's basketball revenue, $25.8M, is up from $23.9M in FY24 (Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL, 6/21).
NEEDED ADJUSTMENTS: Louisville-based WDRB.com's Eric Crawford noted the Louisville athletic department not only "continues to adjust to the effects of a dip in men’s basketball fortunes over the past several seasons and costs associated with that." At the NACDA conference in Las Vegas, Louisville President Kim Schatzel compared the revenues of college athletics and pro leagues, with college athletics at $13.6B, MLB at $10.9B, the NBA at $9.9B and the NHL just over $7B. Schatzel: "The only league that had more revenue than collegiate athletics was the NFL. I put that in perspective to realize that this is an industry we're really talking about” (WDRB.com, 6/21).
