The Per-Athlete Cost of Women's College Sports Is Shockingly Low

Where the Money Goes

Thanks to FOIA requests and state public records laws, we can see exactly how several major programs allocated their NIL and revenue-sharing budgets in 2024-25. The gender splits are stark.

Penn State disclosed in its FY2025 financial report that it allocated $18.37 million total — $18.25 million to men's sports (99.3%) and $120,000 to women's sports (0.66%). That's a 152-to-1 ratio.

Texas A&M, exposed through FOIA records obtained by The Eagle, spent $51.4 million on NIL — $49.2 million on men's sports (95.7%) and $2.2 million on women's sports (4.3%). The backlash was immediate: Texas passed HB 2804 to block future disclosures.

Missouri disclosed $31.7 million in total NIL spending — roughly 88% to football and men's basketball, approximately 4% to women's basketball and other women's sports combined.

UNC's athletic director publicly stated that the program's allocation ran 97.6% men, 2.4% women.

The sport-by-sport breakdown at Penn State tells a more granular story:

Ten thousand dollars for the entire volleyball program. At a Big Ten school. In 2025.

There is one notable counter-example. NC State, per WRAL's public records reporting, allocated meaningfully across Olympic sports: $726,000 to softball, $528,000 to volleyball, $508,000 to gymnastics, $660,000 to women's soccer, and $1 million to women's basketball. It's the only confirmed program distributing six figures across multiple women's sports.

What Each Sport Earns vs. What It Gets

The standard justification is straightforward: schools allocate based on revenue generation. Football and men's basketball generate the money, so they get the money. Penn State's FY2024 athletics financial report lets us test that claim sport by sport, because it's the only school where we have both detailed revenue and detailed NIL allocation data. (Note: the revenue figures below are from Penn State's own institutional report, which separates conference media distributions from sport-level revenue. EADA federal data, which allocates conference distributions to football, shows higher football revenue shares.)

Women's volleyball generates $1.2 million in revenue for Penn State — more than wrestling's $2.4 million when adjusted for the fact that volleyball does it with a fraction of the operating budget. Wrestling gets $1.45 million in NIL. Volleyball gets $10,000. If allocation tracked revenue, volleyball would receive roughly $92,000 — still modest, but nine times what it actually got.

The pattern holds across schools:

At Penn State, football generates roughly half the athletic department's revenue but receives nearly three-quarters of the NIL money. At UNC, the gap is similar — football generates 42% of total department revenue but captures 63% of NIL allocation. NC State is the lone school where the allocation roughly tracks revenue production.

It's worth being precise about what “revenue” means in college athletics, because almost nothing makes money. Men's basketball — the other supposed cash cow — barely breaks even. According to public financial reports, Ohio State men's basketball generated $24.8 million in revenue against $23 million in expenses in FY2024, a $1.8 million surplus on a quarter-billion-dollar athletic department. Texas A&M men's basketball lost $2.1 million. UNC men's basketball is one of the most profitable in the country at $18.7 million surplus — the exception, not the rule. Baseball, soccer, track, swimming, golf — men's and women's alike — all lose money everywhere.

So when schools say women's sports “don't generate revenue,” the honest version is: almost no sport generates revenue. Football subsidizes everything. Wrestling loses money. Baseball loses money. Texas A&M softball lost $3.3 million; Texas A&M baseball lost $3.6 million, according to public financial reports. The question isn't whether women's sports are profitable — it's why unprofitable men's sports like wrestling ($1.45M NIL at Penn State) get 145 times more than unprofitable women's sports like volleyball ($10K).

The cross-school revenue data reinforces this. According to public financial reports, Texas women's basketball brought in $3.5 million in revenue in FY2024 but ran at a $7.5 million loss — coaching costs, not athlete costs, drove the deficit. Ohio State women's volleyball generated $800,000. NC State's entire women's athletics program generated $9.7 million — 8.5% of department revenue. Even LSU gymnastics, which averages 13,500 fans per meet, lost $2.6 million. One of the few women's programs in the country that consistently turns a profit is Nebraska volleyball — $7.1 million in revenue against $5.8 million in expenses in 2023-24 EADA data, profitable for seven straight years.

The broader financial picture matters for context: according to Knight-Newhouse data (which may reference a different fiscal year than the EADA data used elsewhere in this article), only 16 of roughly 350 Division I programs are financially self-sustaining. The rest survive on a patchwork of football surplus, student fees, and university subsidies. James Madison charges students $2,456 per year in athletic fees, covering 73% of its athletic budget. UMass receives $60.2 million in university subsidies — 84% of its total athletic revenue. Even Big Ten member Rutgers has reported deficits exceeding $50 million in recent fiscal years, per university financial disclosures.

Football surplus funds the rest of the department at schools fortunate enough to have it. That's the structural reality of college athletics. But that structural subsidy doesn't explain why football receives 73% of NIL money when it generates 51% of revenue. The gap between “football funds this department” and “football gets everything” is where the data gets interesting.

The Audience Is Already There

While NIL money flows overwhelmingly to men's sports, the audience for women's college sports is growing faster than any other segment.

Gymnastics viewership went from 133,000 viewers in 2019 to 1.7 million in 2026 — a 13x increase in seven years. No other sport at any level has grown viewership that fast over that period. ESPN sold 100% of its ad inventory for the 2026 NCAA gymnastics championship — a first for any non-revenue college sport.

Volleyball drew 1.2 million viewers on ABC for a regular-season match — numbers that would be respectable for many men's college basketball games. Nebraska set a world record for women's sports attendance at 92,003 for Volleyball Day in Nebraska at Memorial Stadium, generating $2.7 million in a single day.

Softball's College World Series drew 2.4 million viewers, the most-watched NCAA softball broadcast in history.

Women's basketball's championship game hit 9.9 million viewers, up 15% year-over-year.

The professional market tells a similar story. WNBA average franchise valuations hit $427 million in 2025, up 59% in a single year. The expansion Golden State Valkyries were valued at $1 billion before playing a game. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America both published investment thesis reports on women's sports in March 2026, pegging the overall market at $2.5 billion and growing — still just 3% of the $80 billion U.S. sports industry, but growing from a tiny base.

Schools are making capital bets with real money, too. Oklahoma built a $42 million softball facility. Stanford invested $38.5 million in a new softball stadium. Baylor committed $30 million to a volleyball arena. Texas is building a standalone volleyball venue. These are not vanity projects — athletic departments don't spend $30-40 million on facilities for sports they believe have no future.

The Closing Window

The data in this article may be among the last public disclosures of its kind.

Ten states have passed or are actively advancing legislation to block public records requests for NIL spending data. Texas passed HB 2804 after the Texas A&M numbers became public — a direct response to the embarrassment of a 96/4 gender split making headlines. Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Kentucky, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and North Carolina have similar bills in various stages of advancement.

The legal landscape is unresolved in the other direction, too. Eight athletes have filed appeals arguing that the House settlement's allocation structure — roughly 86% to football and men's basketball, 7% to women's basketball, 7% to everything else — violates Title IX. The Department of Education initially said Title IX applies to revenue sharing, then revoked the guidance. If those appeals succeed, the reallocation could redirect over $1 billion to female athletes. If they fail, the current splits become entrenched precedent.

The stakes are rising in the meantime. Over 415 Olympic sport programs — swimming, tennis, track — have been cut since May 2024 as schools scramble to fund the new $20-30 million annual revenue-sharing obligations. A White House executive order in April 2026 called for “urgent national action to save college sports.” The system is under pressure from every direction.

Either way, the window to see the raw numbers is closing. Schools now know what public disclosure looks like, and they're legislating accordingly.

What the Numbers Say

This isn't an argument for or against any particular allocation model. It's a data inventory.

The per-athlete cost to compete in women's college sports — even at the highest level — is remarkably low. A volleyball player at $6,000. A gymnast at $5,000. An entire women's volleyball program at Penn State funded at $10,000 total. Meanwhile, those same sports are drawing millions of viewers, selling out arenas, and attracting tens of millions in facility investment.

Whether that gap between audience growth and athlete compensation represents an arbitrage opportunity or a structural inequity depends on your framework. The numbers don't prescribe an answer. They just sit there, side by side, waiting for someone to do something with them.

For however long they're still public.