UNM Athletics struggles to generate enough revenue for significant profit. Despite being a major college in a major city in the United States, UNM continues to operate at a much higher budget than the rest of the Mountain West Conference. You might think that purchasing tickets to a Lobos game funds the program, but there’s more to it than that. In most cases, even the University of New Mexico’s most successful sport — men’s basketball — does not bring in enough revenue to support the program.
The University of New Mexico participates in 22 sports which accounts for 450 total student athletes. All major sports including the Men’s and Women’s basketball program, Men’s and Women’s Soccer, Women’s Volleyball and Men’s Football participate in the Mountain West Conference. Competition is Division I, the highest level of play in Collegiate Sports in the United States.
The most well known of the programs at UNM is the Men’s Basketball team, having won 3 Mountain West Conference championships from 2011 to 2014. Ticket sales only generate revenue for the Men’s basketball program. Lobo Basketball may be a known brand, but it’s hardly reaping a reward once the bills are paid.
The Men’s basketball team brings in $1.14 million in profits per season, no other sports program at UNM generates any revenue. According to College Factual, expenses outweigh ticket and merchandise sales. All revenue goes to maintaining the facilities and paying operating costs for all the other athletic programs. The athletic department’s budget is $3.7 million per year (much higher than the Mountain West conference average) and ticket sales range from $4.2 to $4.5 million per year.
Senior associate athletic director Kurt Esser says “revenue is maxed out, branding needs growth.” “Branding” is promoting the Lobo name in order increase revenue. “Our budget is set at $3.7 million, but we’d spend more if we had it,” Esser said. UNM would need to bring in $1 million more from the football team, along with consistent concession sales to make a reasonable profit.
According to the Daily Lobo, New Mexico’s football program seeks to make $2 million in revenue per season.
UNM’s Athletic Director Paul Krebs says tickets sales “haven’t been enough” to support the program. Esser believes averaging 30,000 fans at football games over the current 20,000 would generate $1 million more in revenue.
While it is typical for Men’s basketball and football to generate nearly all of the revenue in college athletic programs, UNM is overspending. Men’s basketball is successful, but numbers show that ticket revenue helps pay for other sports that don’t bring in any money.
“Ticket revenue is not a component in all revenue,” Esser said. Fans do not know that ticket sales are unable to fund the entire program. Instead, a $3.7 million budget relies on fans to buy food and merchandise. “If we could get fans to order $5-6 dollars worth of food and a shirt for $20, that would go a long way to funding our program,” Esser said.
The UNM Ski team does not generate any revenue, and is aware that all other athletics programs outside the Men’s Basketball team run a deficit. “Teams like football, soccer, volleyball, baseball, track and field gets some ticket revenue but it is not close to cover their expenses,” Landstedt said.
In the track and field program, sports and information director Mike Mulcahy doesn’t believe his program sees enough recognition either to generate any revenue. “Track and cross country are hard sports to pinpoint when it comes to popularity. As is the case with most Olympic sports, track and cross country tend to be virtually unknown on campus,” Mulcahy said. It’s hard to generate revenue because there are very few tickets sold and no other sources of revenue for the program.
The Mountain West conference is not setup to compete with power 5 conferences, the main 5 conferences in college sports. Creating revenue is a mandatory piece in keeping up with the competition, especially in a small conference like the Mountain West. The Mountain West is made up of 11 teams in mostly small cities. For the future of Lobos athletics, it will be about prioritizing goals to generate more revenue for the Mountain West and itself.
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