Women’s college basketball took a shot when the most high-profile programs — Connecticut and Tennessee — lost before Tuesday’s championship game.
But another shot came in the form of a story by Bloomberg that detailed the lack of profitability by women’s basketball programs. Bloomberg looked into the 53 programs in the top six conferences and found that none of them turns a profit.
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Even Connecticut, the most dominant program in the country, lost approximately $730,000 according to Bloomberg. One reason for that deficit is coach Geno Auriemma’s $1.6 million salary.
The coaching staff for one of Tuesday’s finalists, Texas A&M, is being paid a collective $1.36 million; the operating revenue is $1.19 million. Biglead.com speculated if college football paid its coaches 87 percent of the operating revenue — as Michigan State’s women’s hoops did — then Alabama’s coaching staff would receive $48.8 million.
“It’s insane,” Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, told Bloomberg. “You show me a Fortune 500 company that would be profitable if the CEO got 75 percent of the revenue.”
This places a greater emphasis on other sports at a university to turn a profit. In most cases, that means football. That’s why there’s a great deal of pressure to land multiple BCS bids for a conference and to maintain a certain level of excellence. At some schools — notably Ohio State and Texas — the football programs fund all of their varsity sports.
Not every sport is intended to be a moneymaker, and women’s basketball is important. But the operating model is broken; schools have spent as if it were big time only to prove one thing: It isn’t.
