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Report: With no football season, Michigan’s lost revenue expected to hit nine figures for athletics
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Yet another athletic department in the B1G is estimating a nine-figure loss in revenue due to the postponement of the fall football season.
A handful of schools in the conference have stated that they are expecting to see losses around $100 million this fiscal year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Michigan’s athletic department is the latest to announce that kind of setback, according to a report from MLive.com.
“The impact is upwards of almost half our budget,” said Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel on the Congqu’ring Heroes podcast. “We’re still working through some finalized models to exactly figure it out. We hope to have it at some point in September, finalized and sort of nailed down exactly what everything will be.”
On Aug. 11, the B1G became the first Power 5 conference to postpone fall football, followed by the Pac-12. The MAC and Mountain West were the first leagues at the FBS level to make the call.
Already, the University of Iowa has cut four sports, Nebraska has furloughed over 50 employees and Purdue, Wisconsin and others have launched campaigns, hoping to see an increase in donations to help offset some of the losses. Still, programs across the B1G are taking significant hits.
The cancellation of the football season comes in addition to the cancellation of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which typically generate a lot of revenue for conferences and schools, as well. There were also no spring sports or championships at the NCAA level to close out the 2019-20 academic year.
“It has been a substantial impact on the department, and tough, hard, sad decisions have been made,” Manuel said. “Everybody is going through that in our society.”
Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB