Deion Sanders’ first year as head football coach of the Colorado Buffaloes brought in record numbers for ticket and merchandise sales, helping CU post a record amount of revenue — and expenses — for the 2024 fiscal year.

CU athletics also received a higher-than-usual amount of financial support from the campus for the second consecutive year to help balance the budget as it navigates a period of rapid change in college sports.

In the recently published NCAA financial report for the 2024 fiscal year, CU showed a net profit of $8,242,281. The NCAA report includes some accounting differences due to definitions of certain revenues and expenses that they include which differ from CU’s actual budget. According to numbers provided by CU to BuffZone.com, the athletic department actually operated with a profit of $9,907,122 for the 2024 fiscal year.

Technically, however, athletics finished with a profit only for accounting records. In the 2023 fiscal year, athletics had a deficit of $9,896,846 and this year’s “profit” will cover last year’s deficit, thanks to campus support.

Nevertheless, the 2024 fiscal year, which went from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, saw the CU athletic department bring in roughly $142 million in revenue, per CU’s numbers, a significant jump from the previous record of $117 million a year earlier.

There was also a record high of $132 million in operating expenses for FY24, about $5 million more than in FY23.

Ticket and merchandise sales from 2023, Sanders’ first season in Boulder, were a driving force behind the record revenue. Per the NCAA report, CU had $31.2 million in football ticket sales from the 2023 season, crushing the previous record of $16.57 million in 2021.

CU also reported a combined $16.7 million in revenue from merchandise, licensing, sponsorships and game-day parking, concessions, etc. That number was also a record and nearly double the $8.9 million from the previous year.

Record attendance — CU sold out every home game in 2023 for the first time in program history — also led to higher expenses for game day operations, including security. The Buffs are also spending more on student-athlete meals and football staff, as Sanders has added more support staffers than the program had in the past.

“We were probably a little understaffed in comparison to our peers prior to Coach Prime’s arrival,” Cory Hilliard, CU’s senior associate athletic director for business operations, told BuffZone. “Now I think it’s probably right-sizing, so we’re trying to catch up to that from a budget perspective.”

While there were positives in the FY24 budget, conference distribution slipped to $28.3 million for CU’s last year in the Pac-12 conference — nearly $5 million less than the previous year and about $7.5 million less than CU budgeted for the year.

Still, CU was able to show a “profit” in FY24 because of the financial backing of the campus. CU received roughly $27.1 million in direct institutional support for FY24, with a large portion of that covering the deficit of the previous year and the conference distribution shortfall.

“The campus has been working with us over the last few years in cleaning up the balance sheet and some of the previous fiscal years’ deficits that all had different components to it — COVID, the Pac-12 shortfall in conference distribution due to legal settlement stuff,” Hilliard said.

Ultimately, Hilliard said CU athletics views the financial backing of the campus as a positive, as the university is supporting athletics through some turbulent times.

In addition to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, CU athletics had lower-than-projected conference distribution in the final years of its time in the Pac-12. Conference realignment costs from CU moving to the Big 12 this past year, as well as nationwide change that will lead to CU and other institutions providing more financial compensation to student-athletes, has provided even more financial challenges.

“I think the biggest takeaway from all of this is that the collaboration in communication we’re having with the university and the finance leadership team under the university CFO is at an all-time high,” Hilliard said. “With (first-year chancellor) Justin Schwartz’s involvement, it has been really proactive in looking at what’s coming and how the university can help support athletics in this new environment that all of us are entering, especially at the power four level.”

Support from the university will be important to CU’s athletic success, Hilliard said, as the next wave of conference realignment hits in the future.

“The knowledge that the institution is supporting us in that is there,” he said, “because I think that’ll be a larger review of who’s included and not included in that next round (of reorganization).”

Sparked by the December 2022 hiring of Sanders as head coach, Hilliard said CU athletics is “maximizing the current revenue streams that we have,” but there are also rising costs for expenses.

CU’s relatively low number of varsity programs, at 17, could be a benefit, however. For decades, CU has been on the low side among its peers in terms of varsity sports, with some schools having 30-plus programs. However, a future that includes paying student-athletes will create challenges for some of those schools, including the possibility of cutting sports.

Hilliard said of CU, “I think we’re right-sized for what’s coming.”

With that, CU athletics feels it has the support of campus needed to navigate the future but also needs its fans and donors to help.

“I think the challenges are still paramount to, we have to have the support of our season ticket holders and our donors and the partners that we have strategically with campus through sponsorships to keep funding the needs of the operation under the guardrails that are in front of us, whatever that may be,” Hilliard said.