CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs

CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs

Published Fri, Dec 19 2025

6:29 AM EST

Key Points

• CNBC ranks the 75 most valuable college athletic programs.
• The programs are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the top 75 in last year's rankings.
• Earlier this month the University of Utah announced it will be the first college athletic department to accept private equity money.

There's a new leader in college sports — the University of Texas at Austin.

The school's athletic program, which tops CNBC's valuation rankings, is now worth $1.48 billion, 16% more than last year. In fiscal 2024, the program generated aggregate revenue of $332 million, more than any other school and 23% more than in the previous year, according to figures from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database at Syracuse University. The biggest source of revenue for UT's athletic program was $137 million from donors, according to the database. That's 53% more than in 2023.

Last year's most valuable athletic program, Ohio State University, fell to No. 2, with a value of $1.35 billion, 2% more than a year ago. The program's revenue fell 9%, to $255 million, in fiscal 2024 due to a 20% decrease in ticket revenue, according to the Knight-Newhouse database. The drop occurred primarily because the school had two fewer home football games during the 2023-24 season than it did in 2022-23, an Ohio State spokesperson told CNBC.

CNBC's 75 most valuable athletic programs for 2025 are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the value of the top 75 in last year's rankings. This year's combined programs had aggregate revenue of $11.84 billion in fiscal 2024, 8% more than 2024's programs posted the previous year, according to the Department of Education's Equity in Athletics Data Analysis and the Knight-Newhouse database.

The value of college athletic programs is being fueled in large part by escalating media rights deals for football and basketball. The Big 12 conference, for example, began a six-year television extension of its media rights agreements with Fox and ESPN this season that will pay the conference an average of $380 million a year, nearly double what it got from its previous media rights deal, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Beginning in 2026, ESPN will pay an average of $1.3 billion a year for the College Football Playoff, more than twice its previous deal, according to JP Morgan. And starting in 2026, Notre Dame's new four-year media rights deal with NBC will pay the school an average of $50 million a year, more than double the amount in its current agreement with the network, according to JP Morgan and a person knowledgeable about the deal who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

There's more room for growth.

"College football is at the apex, right below the NFL, and will eventually go to a 16-team playoff [from 12], because that's where the money is," said Patrick Crakes, principal of Crakes Media, a media rights and distribution advisory firm that works with media companies, sports teams and leagues.

As CNBC reported a year ago, private capital is interested in tapping into college sports. The schools could use outside capital to fund the class action settlement in which the NCAA and the Power Five conferences will pay $2.78 billion in back damages, over a 10-year period, to thousands of Division I athletes.

Outside capital could also fund the more than $20 million a year in revenue share the schools will now pay to their current student-athletes. Opendorse — a company that helps facilitate name, image and likeness, or NIL, deals for college athletes — projected in a report that the NIL market for college athletes will grow from $1.17 billion in 2024 to $2.55 billion in 2026.

As CNBC reported, earlier this month the University of Utah announced it will be the first college athletic department to accept private equity money.

A deal that would have UC Investments, which manages assets held by the University of California system's endowment and pension funds, pay the Big Ten $2.4 billion for 10% of the conference's media and sponsorship rights stalled in October. The New York Times reported in November that UC Investments put the deal on hold due to continued public opposition from two of the conference's schools, the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California.

Methodology

The rankings exclude military academies and are limited to schools that participate in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision, or FBS, which tend to attract top players.

The revenue figures were obtained from the Department of Education's Equity in Athletics Data Analysis and the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database for fiscal year 2024.

To compile the values of college athletic programs, CNBC consulted AthleticDirectorU, which has an expansive database of college athletic program financials and information. AthleticDirectorU's publisher, Jason Belzer, has advised universities on NIL and private equity deals. Belzer is a venture partner for Sequence Equity, a private-capital firm that has pitched a plan to make the playoffs of the NCAA's Division I Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS, a separate entity outside the purview of the NCAA.

CNBC's list reflects the current enterprise value of each program, starting with a base revenue multiple of four for all institutions, and then adjusting the multiple for variables, including conference affiliation, estimated NIL spend, school subsidies, number of alumni and other factors that can catalyze revenue growth and profitability.

To determine the rankings, CNBC and Belzer incorporated the expertise of several people knowledgeable about athletic program valuations who asked not to be named in order to freely discuss details of the programs.

Figures in this article and the chart reflect CNBC's rounding of the numbers.

— CNBC's Lynne Pate contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC and NBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast's planned spinoff of Versant.

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