Remember that time JO took 30mm from Nike and didnt even consider the 60mm coming from Under Armor…
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To my understanding college bball teams, similar to NBA teams, get their revenue from primarily two sources: TV and merchandising.
For merchandising you need a strong brand affinity and broad audience engagement on social media. Right now we don’t have much of either and how our instagram account is doing is an indicator. My assumption is that we lack the personnel who understand how marketing works in today’s day and age. Now for TV, there was obviously the Covid situation last year, but playing in non-major tournaments and dropping those prime time games against brand names won’t help either. Until the AD’s office find a way to fix those the bball team won’t be making much money. Just my two cents here
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I haven’t looked at their numbers, but college sports accounting has to be carefully interpreted. A couple of slightly technical articles on this here from an economist who has been critical about college sports accounting practices:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ncaa-isnt-going-broke-no-matter-how-much-you-hear-it/amp/
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Looking at these numbers, I’d guess some of the main drivers of the hoops program being in the red in 2019 (according to this presentation, which as noted by poster above, is likely not a fully accurate picture) was bonuses paid out to coaches for the championship and travel for the tournament, which is somewhat understandable.
In the 2019 year (June 2018-June 2019) total basketball revenues were $13,200,301. Then in the 2020 year (June 2019-June 2020) total basketball revenues were $13,312,623. So largely the same. But expenses went way down from $13,764,636 to $10,914,229. Biggest differences I see are in the coaching salaries bucket and team travel bucket. Both of those were probably highly inflated in the 2019 year due to the championship. In 2020 the men’s team - in this report - are shown as being in the black.
Also, the 2020 report wouldn’t really reflect too much of the major COVID losses yet I don’t think, at least not in ticket sales. We didn’t get NCAA distributions from the canceled tournament, but fans were still in stands for the rest of the season covered by that report. The 2021 report may show some pretty brutal figures as those ticket sales numbers will have likely plummeted if not fully disappeared.
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I agree- with all of the BUZZ of UVA basketball since our National Championship it really has been DISSAPOINTING that we continue to fumble our opportunities: 1. Poorly ranked out of conference opponents, 2. Botching the midnight Madnesses/No Streaming, 3 Lack of Social Media Videos, and more I’m probably forgetting.
Life will go on, but it’s just a sense of the department 1. Not enjoying the limelight, 2. Taking us *rabid fans for granted.
I somehow *hope that these are just MAJOR mistakes, and they hope to improve, because atleast they can make some changes, but they need to start firing people and hire a REAL Marketing department.
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Dont really care about the midnight madness lol just want a stream. A pregame fan interaction would be cool on the practice courts (playing against players in cornhole, shooting contest with fans/21 with fans/pick up basketball tournament, skills drills with players and coaches. They used to do something at the dell.)
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It points to an athletic department and university that does not grasp the current nature of college athletics, which could be big trouble should a large crisis arise.
Edit: we never announced any form of NIL program by the way
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What you’re mentioning is *all the same thing. Fan engagement either in person or “logically” having it streamed due to UVA fans wanting to witness WORLDWIDE should make sense. Honestly I don’t know what the *eff is going on with our department.
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Couldn’t agree more. You think we’d embrace that we’ve become a national power in basketball and focus our marketing attention accordingly but alas, we have not. Maybe some of that has to do with Tony’s wishes but it’s still very frustrating when you can see live practices of other team’s on Youtube for example and I’ll be watching the ONE pre-season event we’ve put out - besides 15 second practice clips - on someone’s instagram live most likely.
Hell, we streamed the Blue/White scrimmage three years ago. If we were so worried about tape getting out to the rest of the ACC, which let’s be serious is a completely absurd excuse, then they sure didn’t leverage it considering we lost 1 ACC game all year.
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Yeah. Which makes me hope that Tony finds meaning in coaching for a long time. I will B&%$# about the streaming aspect for the scrimmage, but our programs goes straight into the gutter once Tony leaves given how weak our brand is. We are very much who we are because of Tony Bennett and his coaching staff (plus Sabila and Curtis), not the V sabres despite the pockets of success in the past.
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I’m pretty sure it’s BS accounting to drive home the need for the new football ops center. Then you throw in that VAF money is separate from athletic department money and you can manipulate a bunch of stuff to make whatever argument you want to make.
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I will continue to whine about my bugaboos — ducking the spotlight (E.g. lack of streaming), 2 foul rule, forgetting to gameplan in round 1 of the tourney— but yes, Tony is awesome, seems like a genuinely good dude, and his VORP as a UVa hoops coach is astronomical.
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Disagree with the straight to the gutter comment. Obviously would be a huge drop off but no reason we shouldn’t be able to make 7 tournaments in the first 10 years post-Bennett. We have top 10 facilities, a top 15 budget, and get to play Duke and Carolina annually.
Plus as an added bonus we wouldn’t have to think very hard to search for a replacement as Washington State is being kind enough to develop the perfect guy for us again.
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Somewhere in the basketball revenues should reflect huge payout from 2019 national championship. The payout is spread out over a number of years but is over $10 mil for winning it all I think.
Ok after some research the payout is spread over 6 years. Same money for reaching final 4 as winning it all. VCU earned over $9 Mil for 2011 Final 4 run.
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My 2 minute research suggested that there is a bump for the final 4 (not for the natty interestingly), but I couldn’t tell what, and all payouts are determined by the conference. I.e, money goes to conference first, the distributed to schools. I wouldn’t put it past Swofford to say, “we’d like to congratulate UVa for their bonus by doing what’s best for the conference, splitting it between UNC and Duke.” I’m kidding…. I hope I’m kidding.
As for UVa w/o Tony: I think our baseline would be VPI under Young. Median of 6/7 in the ACC and bubble team. To be fair, I think Young has VPI above their baseline. Coach who beats that is a good coach / coach who does worse is a bad coach.
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Tony gets some votes in the CBS Candid Coaches question on who will replace K as the most prominent face / voice in college hoops. Behind Izzo/Wright/Calipari. But the interesting part (and relevant IMO to our discussion of general lack of online content on hoops) is that on the podcast, Norlander said a number of coaches answered that they would have picked Tony, but he would run from such a distinction.
I guess my thought on that is basically that it’s a balance. Humility is a good personal virtue. But it’s a personal virtue.
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I think they are 100% correct. Wright will too. Unless I’m wrong about Jay it almost has to be Cal by default given Few doesn’t have a title and Izzo and Self have so many bad things surrounding their programs right now.
Also the quote about Wright and the Olympic team raises a good point: Tony should try to to get back in the mix with USA basketball. Just another box to check to make recruiting easier.
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wow. 280 aint 60 and this was like 12 years ago. UA was on the rise then with access to capital markets
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