Here's how much money Ole Miss athletics made during pandemic-altered fiscal year

OXFORD — As it turns out, the financial cost of a global pandemic is only slightly larger than the cost of being on NCAA probation if you're in the Ole Miss athletics department.

According to Ole Miss' operating budget for Fiscal Year 2020 (which stretches from Oct. 1, 2019-Sept. 30, 2020), Ole Miss made $112,550,556 in athletics revenue. That's a dropoff of less than $5 million from the school's reported Fiscal Year 2019 revenue of $117,297,653.

As expected, Ole Miss saw a sizable decrease in ticket revenue from FY19 into FY20 because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The athletic department made $6 million fewer off football tickets and more than $2 million fewer on game guarantees without nonconference football.

Still, these losses were offset by the infusion of SEC revenue that the school had not been receiving while it was on NCAA probation.

In FY19, Ole Miss received $33,595,000 in conference revenue. That number increased to $46,395,000 in FY20. As such, Ole Miss only had to transfer $1.6 million from reserves into its revenue in FY20 compared to $10.3 million in FY19.

To offset the losses in revenue, Ole Miss cut back on expenditures in a few key areas. Guarantee game payments was a key cutback; without nonconference opponents coming for football, Ole Miss saved just under $1.8 million year over year. The athletic department also saved just under $1 million payments to athletics administrators and more than $3 million in payments to its facilities debt service.

Even with the issues of the pandemic affecting the fiscal numbers, Ole Miss is still showing a trend toward athletic growth. To put these numbers in perspective, Ole Miss reported $95,995,339 in revenue in FY16, the year the Rebels went to and won the Sugar Bowl. As recently as FY13, Ole Miss reported revenue as $62,621,965, barely more than half of what the department reported during this pandemic year. 

Break the revenue data up by percentages, and you'll find:

• 41.2% of Ole Miss' FY20 revenue came from the SEC
• 17.9% came from annual fund revenue
• 12.4% came from football ticket sales
• No other source represented more than 7% of Ole Miss athletics' revenue

Ole Miss athletics' expenditures for FY20 broke down like this:

• Coach and staff salaries represented 25.9% of Ole Miss' expenditures for FY20
• Scholarships represented 11.5%
• Facilities debt service represented 10.9%

By comparison, Ole Miss spent 22.3% on staff salaries, 13% on facilities debt services and 10.8% on scholarships in FY19.


SOURCE: Suss, Nick. "Here's how much money Ole Miss athletics made during pandemic-altered fiscal year." Mississippi Clarion Ledger, 26 January 2021, https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/ole-miss/2021/01/26/ole-miss-athletics-revenue-expenditures-fiscal-year-2020-pandemic/6679677002/

Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.