University of Idaho’s Athletics department expecting possible $2 million deficit

The University of Idaho Athletics department is anticipating to have an operating deficit of about $2 million this year in their auxiliary fund, Business Manager for Athletics Thomas Zimmer said.

Zimmer said while Athletics’ expenses have stayed relatively level in the past years, the amount of money they’re bringing in has gone down. This is largely due to Idaho Football’s switch to the Big Sky Conference in April of 2016. This switched Idaho Football from the Sun Belt Conference while all other Idaho sports moved from the Western Athletic Conference

(WAC) to the Big Sky in 2014. All sports are now a part of the Big Sky, except Swim & Dive, which is still part of the WAC.

Athletics’ has a mixed budget, which means they have a budget within the General Education Budget and auxiliary. And their $2 million deficit in auxiliary is not a part of the UI’s $22 million deficit in the General Education budget.

ICYM: “A beginners guide to the budget deficit”

Athletics’ cannot go negative in the General Education Budget, as the $22 million deficit is based on projected loss of money in the future.

But with UI’s General Education Budget cuts, Athletics’ reduced their budget permanently by $334,000 in FY20. And for FY21 are being asked to reduce their budget by approximately $510,000, Zimmer said. The final budget reductions for FY21 have not been finalized and are possible to change.

!function(e,i,n,s){var t=”InfogramEmbeds”,d=e.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement(“script”);o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src=”https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js”,d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,”infogram-async”);

A part of the reason UI’s revenue is down is that they haven’t been receiving as much money from game guarantees.

Game guarantees are agreements between two schools, one school will receive incentives paid by the opponent.

When Idaho Football was a part of the Sun Belt Conference, they were making on average $1 million or more per game guarantee, with the game guarantees average now being $625,000 to $675,000.

Athletics does still have some game guarantees from the Sun Belt until 2022, Zimmer said.

Money toward game guarantees are recorded in the Football budget, Zimmer said. But he added that revenue from all areas are put together to fund the budgets of all sports programs and units within athletics.

Athletic Director Terry Gawlik said she is aware of how game guarantees change things finically. Gawlik said having more students at games would be great, but she can’t force them into the seats, so they are looking at all their options.

“Only being here since Sep. 1 we’re really, really frugal,” Gawlik said. “We’re watching every penny … we’re just trying to do everything we can to find dollars — but it’s a large number to make up.”

Alex Brizee can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @alex_brizee

*This article has been updated to reflect Athletic’s accurate department