The entrance to Husky Stadium on the UW campus in Seattle Monday, January 8, 2024. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2024)
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By
Andy Yamashita
Seattle Times staff reporter
When Scott Coil considers the state of the University of Washington athletics department’s finances, he likens it to a medical procedure.
Coil, who was hired as a senior associate athletic director and chief financial officer in October, likened the past few years — impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, abrupt coaching changes and conference realignment — to the financial equivalent of a traumatic injury.
Its operating budget for fiscal year 2025 (FY25) is proof that Washington’s financial situation is “stable,” Coil said, though more challenges are approaching.
“We’re going to keep things flat where we can,” Coil said. “And we’re going to invest in those things that are the biggest strategic imperatives for the program, to be anchored in the world-class student-athlete experience that we’re striving for: success in the classroom, success on the field and student-athlete well-being.”
Washington intercollegiate athletics posted a $5.88 million operating deficit, according to its FY25 NCAA Financial Report acquired by The Seattle Times. FY25 covers the 2024-25 academic year, Pat Chun’s first full year as UW athletic director. It’s an improvement on the $9.21 million deficit it operated at during fiscal year 2024 (FY24).
The Huskies generated $178.47 million in operating revenue, but spent $184.35 million in operating expenses. Back in June 2024, UW projected $165 million in operating revenue and $167 million in operating expenses, though that did not include maintenance costs reflected in the NCAA financial report.
It’s the fourth time during the past five years UW athletics, which does not receive any direct support from the state government like tax dollars and gets limited financial resources from the university, has operated at a deficit.
Coil, who previously served as the director of university budget operations for UW’s finance and budget strategy team from 2023-25, doesn’t expect anything to change until 2030, when the Huskies expect to earn a full share of the Big Ten’s media rights.
“We are looking at a sustained operating deficit until we get to the full share,” said Coil, who began working with the athletic department on an interim basis last April before joining permanently in October. “But I think that we have more resilience. More ability now to manage that than we did the first year.”
While its revenue creation did not quite reach the record-setting marks it managed because of coaching buyouts in FY24, Washington still enjoyed a relatively strong FY25. Ticket sales, contributions and media rights and distributions remained its three most productive areas for revenue generation.
The Huskies brought in $31.14 million in ticket sales, breaking the $30 million threshold for the second consecutive fiscal year. UW athletics earned $45.87 million through its media rights and distributions: $30 million from media rights, $3 million from NCAA distributions and $12.87 million in conference distributions from the Big Ten.
But FY25 was also Washington’s most productive fiscal year for contributions dating back to fiscal year 2018 (FY18), the earliest year The Times has financial reporting information for UW athletics. The Huskies generated $52.88 million in contributions in FY25, thanks in large part to an $11.99 million bequest donation. Around $40.9 million of UW’s contributions were directed for football.
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Even without the one-time bequest donation, however, UW still received around $41 million in contributions — the same amount it gained in FY24. Between FY18 and fiscal year 2023 (FY23), Washington athletics had never surpassed $40 million in contributions and only exceeded $35 million once.
Coil said he believes UW has found a sustainable contribution number, but added he doesn’t want to exhaust Washington’s donor base by making them solely responsible for carrying UW through this challenging financial situation.
“If you go too far in any one revenue category too hard for too long, you risk burnout,” he said. “We have to make sure it continues to be sustainable and we have to make sure that the product, if you will, is continuing to be about who we want to be and fits our identity. That we’re not just chasing a dollar because it’s there.”
Many of Washington’s expenses in FY25 remained similar to its numbers from FY24. It spent $19.1 million on scholarships, $35.5 million on coaching salaries and $35 million on athletic administrator and support staff salaries.
Additionally, several one-time facilities upgrades like the student-athlete dining hall in the Don James Center, the Big Ten Network studio inside Alaska Airlines Arena — projected to open officially in late spring — upgrades around Husky Stadium and some of the new basketball practice facility construction costs were added into UW’s FY25 budget. Washington also got a $1.7 million upgrade for its soccer stadium, which will serve as a practice facility for the upcoming 2026 men’s World Cup, funded by FIFA.
FY25 was the first chance to see the financial impact of Big Ten logistics, too, as Washington spent $13.12 million on team travel during their first season in the conference. During its final five seasons in the more regional Pac-12 — though not counting the COVID-impacted fiscal years 2020 and 2021 — UW averaged $8.98 million in team travel.
Along with the rise in costs associated with longer flights, lodging has also become more expensive on the road in the Big Ten. College athletic teams are subject to hotel price surging, especially in smaller college towns with fewer available rooms.
It’s an issue that didn’t loom as large in the old Pac-12, which had several teams located in or near larger cities. But Coil said two years of experience traveling the Big Ten has given UW added insight as it prepares to present its budget for fiscal year 2027.
“We can start to budget for those known differences,” said Coil, who completed his master’s degree at UW’s Foster School of Business and has worked at the university since 2013. “We have enough of a baseline that we can anchor it in something reliable.”
Washington’s financial situation, however, remains perilous. UW athletics’ debt, which sat at $244.44 million since fiscal year 2022, went up to $279 million in FY25 after the athletic department took a $14.6 million loan from the university’s capital assets pool (CAP) to help make an interest-only debt-service payment to the university’s internal lending program and a pair of interest-free $10 million loans from the Big Ten and FOX.
The debt number will spike again in fiscal year 2026 (FY26) because UW athletics was granted another CAP loan, this time for $17.7 million, for debt-service payment and took another $10 million loan from the Big Ten against its future earnings.
“When you’re taking out debt to pay debt, that’s not a good financial structure,” Coil said. “But it just speaks to some of the confines we find ourselves in. I’m hopeful that we can leverage the stability we have, leverage the new relationships we have, leverage some of the opportunities in the tumultuous, dynamic nature of things, to find better partnerships to provide more sustainable funding.”
FY26 will also be the first operating budget that includes revenue-sharing payments from the athletic department to student-athletes, an additional $20.5 million expense. Coil said UW athletics made conscious spending cuts to responsibly incorporate revenue sharing throughout FY25 and FY26.
“I really believe that going forward, together with campus, we will thrive and we’ll make it to that full share in the Big Ten,” Coil said. “And happy financial days again.”
Andy Yamashita: ayamashita@seattletimes.com. Andy Yamashita is a sports reporter at The Seattle Times, primarily covering Washington Huskies football.
