GAO report shows Division I athletics spend billions more than they earn

Under the 2025 settlement of the In re College Athlete NIL Litigation case, Division I colleges can share up to $20.5 million of athletics revenue with student-athletes, beginning with the 2025-26 academic year. The settlement binds all DI institutions that choose to participate in the revenue-sharing program.

The Government Accountability Office's latest analysis of NCAA financial data for the 2023-24 academic year shows that the 352 DI colleges reported spending a total of $20.8 billion on athletics. The 69 "Power" colleges in the most competitive DI conferences accounted for more than half of that spending. DI programs generated $13.1 billion in revenue, with Power colleges contributing $10 billion, primarily through media rights, game-day sales and donations.

Spending outpaced revenue at the overwhelming majority of schools. GAO found that 94 percent of DI athletics programs, including 49 of the 69 Power colleges, spent more than they generated. The median college reported a gap of $20.6 million, larger than the median $12.3 million gap recorded a decade earlier. All DII programs also spent more than they earned, with combined expenditures of $2.7 billion, revenue of $0.4 billion and $2.3 billion in college contributions.

To bridge these shortfalls, colleges contributed $7.2 billion in the 2023-24 year. Those contributions are drawn from tuition and fees paid by students and other unrestricted funds, and they indirectly include federal aid that students receive to cover tuition and fees.

GAO conducted the study by reviewing aggregated data from the NCAA's membership financial database for the 2014-15 and 2023-24 academic years and interviewing representatives from four national stakeholder organizations. The report was prepared at the request of Congress amid heightened federal interest in college athletics financing.