Program ROI

[sirthought]

Interesting thread on Twitter talking about wins/program expenses.
UC is on the cross section of 5 and 60M.

LINK TO TWITTER

SLIGHTLY LARGER PHOTO VERSION

The best?
Butler - 3.93 wins/$10M spent
UNC - 3.92

The worst?
Vanderbilt - 0.13
Oklahoma State - 0.12

FYI:
Duke - 1.41
Georgetown - 0.28

 

[sirthought]

Looking at it slightly differently, we're in the more expense/less wins quadrant from 2013-17

I guess this begs the question for an A.D. of how many wins to expect based on a promised investment in the budget?

This chart is answering a question that, over a period of time, has the program gotten better at spending money in order to achieve more? For UC I think the answer is no. They don't spend anywhere near what other programs do, but relative to the increases in expense, they have not achieved a greater return on investment.

 

[sirthought]

Over the past decade UC looks a bit better.

In the past decade ('08-'17), how much has each team paid for each their tourny wins (Expense/Tourny Win)? Another way to look at the ROI of a program when paired with total expenses.

The original data comes from the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis reports from the Department of Education. (link: http://ope.ed.gov/athletics)

 

[ervins84]

I mean this is a pretty graph but a terrible way of evaluating the actual ROI

 

[sirthought]

I mean this is a pretty graph but a terrible way of evaluating the actual ROI

You're free to offer suggestions of how to do it.

I'm just posting what they shared, which was actually looking at it from several different data points, so no single one way. There are way more charts on that guys twitter feed. It's all interesting to think about, especially contemplating all the taxpayer/fundraising resources that go into these programs and what the expectations are versus what they should be.

I think a big takeaway for me is seeing that the tournament is valued so much more than the whole season, not to mention just the overall journey of the athletes and student experience. But if we're looking at tournament games/wins...then the majority of programs have had a terrible return.

 

[ervins84]

I'm not interested in doing that for a multitude of reasons. Not wanting to take the time to do a real study and comparison being the biggest. Especially when I don't have the data necessary to make these comparisons. I also don't understand why not wanting to do the work prevents me froM saying it's mostly useless. Interesting? Sure. But it's just click bait esque analysis that gives people something silly to argue over.

Why would we only consider dollars spent per tournament win? There's a lot of different revenue streams to consider before we can remotely call that our ROI, even more when you consider all the unquantifiable soft benefits of operating a high major program.

 

[waterhead]

I mean this is a pretty graph but a terrible way of evaluating the actual ROI

I agree. I think the chart is interesting but leaves a lot to be desired. I am not sure how the "expenses" are calculated. For instance we have put a lot of money into a new arena and adding to an old stadium recently not to mention Varsity Village etc. Are those "expenses" and if they are...we will obviously be behind programs that have not needed to do that recently.

I know our athletic budget is very low compared to a lot of power conference schools and we are getting good value from mens BB and FB in comparison to our annual budget...especially over the last decade or so. Maybe not in NCAA tourney wins but overall it should be very good from a regular season wins perspective.

 

[sirthought]

Again…The original data comes from the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis reports from the Department of Education. (link: http://ope.ed.gov/athletics)

If you go there, they are front and center about allowing you to download the data for one school or several. This was part of a push with DOE and NCAA.

These guys on Twitter just grabbed the data and created charts from different viewpoints. The expense is supposed to be just men's hoops programs and not overall athletic department, which I'm sure that any costs could be blurred, but it's however the program reported their budget.

Arenas would certainly be a part of it. Since this data ends in 2017 I'm guessing UC had not seen the full expense yet.

Over the past decade UC spent in the ballpark of $60 million on mbb. Smaller (population) schools like Georgetown, Marquette, and Louisville spent considerably more, but they play their games in off campus, pro-style arenas, that are likely much more expensive.

On the other side, Butler and Dayton likely haven't done extensive upgrades to their arenas for a while.

Things like private planes, coaches salaries, etc. all goes into it too. I think overall wins is a stronger measurement that just tourney wins. And is tourney success really the ultimate measure of a return on investment?

I'm sure Division II or lower schools spend a healthy amount on sports and don't have nearly the same platform as March Madness, yet they still invest in it.

But I bet there are a lot of donors wondering what their investment is getting the school and program after seeing this.

 

[skylinecat]

I agree. I think the chart is interesting but leaves a lot to be desired. I am not sure how the "expenses" are calculated. For instance we have put a lot of money into a new arena and adding to an old stadium recently not to mention Varsity Village etc. Are those "expenses" and if they are...we will obviously be behind programs that have not needed to do that recently.

I know our athletic budget is very low compared to a lot of power conference schools and we are getting good value from mens BB and FB in comparison to our annual budget...especially over the last decade or so. Maybe not in NCAA tourney wins but overall it should be very good from a regular season wins perspective.

It's a stupid chart because it is all dependent on how far you make it in the tournament. If we beat Nevada and go on a final 4 run, we would have 3 or 4 more wins for the same amount of expenses. All it shows is that teams that perform well in the tournament do well in this chart because they are taking the total expenses and dividing it by the number of tournament wins. When you change the denominator from 8 to 18 you are obviously going to blast up the chart.