Athletics

Athletics continues to make strides to remain self-supporting

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics recently filed its 2015-16 NCAA Annual Financial Report, which showed continued advancement in its efforts to remain a self-supporting unit, while providing a student-athlete experience that is unsurpassed.

Revenues in FY 2016 continued to trend upward. Among the areas resulting in higher revenues were Big Ten Conference bowl distributions, increases in suite and club seat revenues and an increase in licensing-related revenues. The continued strength of the Penn State brand also resulted in additional corporate partner compensation.

The 2015-16 fiscal year also saw an increase in expenses, including additional grant-in-aid expenses relating to the providing of full cost of attendance to student-athletes, enhanced student-athlete meals and nutrition stations, coaching, administrative and support staff compensation, and the costs associated with home game operations, including increased security measures and staffing.

Additional expenses included the debt service payments on the University's short-term $30 million loan to ICA, borrowed over the past three years, in addition to the increased cost of daily operations for Penn State's nationally competitive 31-sport program, which has won seven NCAA championships and 29 Big Ten titles since fall 2012.

During fiscal 2016, Penn State Athletics generated $132,248,076 in net revenues against $129,349,149 in total expenses to finish the year with a positive balance of approximately $2.9 million.

"Penn State Athletics continues to be a strong, self-supporting unit, boosted by new and increasing revenue streams during fiscal 2016, while remaining attentive to rising expenses in many areas," said Sandy Barbour, director of Athletics. "During the past year, we've continued to see strong and encouraging indicators, including ticketing, sponsorships and licensing, and additional revenue in other areas, that have brought us closer to a sense of normalcy, in conjunction with our efforts to closely manage expenses.

"We remain vigilant in our expense management, while creating conditions for success for our students and achieving comprehensive excellence throughout ICA," Barbour added.

Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics does not receive any funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or its taxpayers, nor any student fees or financial support directly allocated by central administration. Penn State is one of only seven NCAA Division I athletic departments that reports to be self-supporting, according to USA Today's 2016 College Athletics Finance Report.

Penn State has one of the nation's most broad-based and successful athletic programs, with approximately 800 student-athletes and 31 programs, tied for the fourth-highest sport total among Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, that are fully funded at the NCAA maximum scholarship levels.

Nittany Lion student-athletes have an NCAA Graduation Success Rate of 89 percent and have earned 195 CoSIDA Academic All-America selections, the fourth-highest total among Division I programs. The Nittany Lions have won 76 team national championships and 102 Big Ten Conference crowns all-time and their 29 NCAA championships since 1992-93 are the most of any Big Ten institution. Penn State is one of just nine institutions nationally to finish in the Top 25 of the Learfield Directors' Cup in all 23 years of the program's existence, earning three Top 10 finishes in the past four years.

Last Updated March 3, 2017