The NCAA depends on the men's basketball tourney for nearly all of its annual $1.1B in revenue GETTY IMAGES
The NCAA is facing decreases of $475M in revenues and $380M in expenses for FY '20, and those amounts "would represent a 42% decline in revenue and a 36% decline in expenses" from last year, according to Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY. Moody's Investors Services calls those figures its "adjusted indicators," which can "differ slightly from numbers shown in the association's financial statements." In dollar amounts, that means the NCAA will have about $654M in revenue and about $668M in expenses in FY '20. Both of those amounts have been above $1B in each of the past two years. The association "depends on the men's basketball tournament for nearly all" of its roughly $1.1B in normal annual revenue. During FY '20, the NCAA "had been scheduled to collect" $827M just from its "long-term multimedia and marketing rights agreement with CBS and Turner." The association's financial statement attributed $178M "in non-CBS/Turner revenue" for FY '19 to "'championships and NIT tournaments,' with a sizable portion of that likely coming from the men's basketball tournament." The report released yesterday "references the NCAA tapping a line of credit." Moody's VP & Senior Credit Officer Dennis Gephardt said that his firm's revenue estimates for '20 "take into account the NCAA making recoveries from business-interruption insurance and receiving 30% of its expected revenue from the CBS/Turner deal even though the tournament was not held" (USA TODAY, 3/25).
