A lost college football season would cost the 65 Power Five schools at least $4 billion. 

As many as 20 FBS athletic departments have announced pay cuts and furloughs to staff as schools have endured heavy losses without spring sports and March Madness. Conferences, meanwhile, are announcing scheduling changes and eliminating tournaments to help shave costs.

Approximately 50% of FBS athletic departments are self-sustaining, meaning expenses don’t exceed revenue and require student fees or university support to fill gaps. Without football revenue, only two schools – Georgia and Texas A&M – would meet that definition.

Implications of No Football Season

• At least $1.2 billion in lost ticket sales
• An average loss of $62 million for each Power Five School
• Football revenue accounts for nearly 50% of Power Five athletic budgets

Even if the Premier League returns to action this season, its clubs will have to refund millions of dollars to broadcast partners like Sky, BT Sport and Amazon after Manchester United confirmed it expects to pay a $24.5 million rebate on broadcast rights.

The EPL’s 20 teams, depending on how often they play on television, owe a collective $367 million. That figure could double if the Premier League can’t play out the season’s remaining 92 games.

The Premier League largely takes broadcast rights fees up front, and the league’s current domestic partners paid a combined $6.1 billion for the rights last year. Overseas broadcasters spent an additional $5.1 billion, including $250 million from NBC Sports to show games in the U.S.

Returning broadcast money represents by far the largest effect of the pandemic on clubs; United said rebates will account for 87% of negative impact, with another $3.7 million lost in merchandise and ticket revenues.

Without sports to wager on, it appears bettors are heading to the U.S. stock market. Three of the four largest U.S. online brokers- Charles Schwab, ETrade, and Interactive Brokers – have combined to add 780,000 new customer accounts in March and April.

March is normally a hot time for sports bettors, but with no NCAA basketball tournament, the shift to cheap online accounts helped the market recoup a third of its value from the pandemic-caused selloff. Google Trends data shows search volume for “buy stock” was four times higher in March 2020 than October 2008, when the last recession started.

Without sports, betting handles took a dive as the shutdown commenced. Indiana reported a take of $26.3 million in April, down 64% from March, while West Virginia managed $3 million in wagers, a decline of 79.8%.

Meanwhile, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy put $3 million into an ETrade account in March while documenting the journey online. That move came two months after Barstool sold a third of itself to Penn National Gaming, which is currently developing a Barstool-branded sportsbook in the hope that normal days return.

Success of ‘The Last Dance’ may be enough to fuel ESPN in the absence of live sports. The Michael Jordan docuseries is now the network’s most-watched documentary and the positive numbers have led ESPN to move up the release dates of three other ‘30 for 30’ documentaries. The network has also ordered a nine-part series on Tom Brady that will air next year. 

‘The Last Dance’ By The Numbers

• Averaged 5.6 million U.S. viewers across the 10 episodes.
• 23.8 million households have watched it outside the U.S.
• Ranks as 10 of the 11 most-watched telecasts among the key 18-34 demo since mid-March.
• No. 1 trending topic on Twitter for five straight Sundays. 
• More social conversation on a per-episode basis than any TV series this year.

Prior to ‘The Last Dance,’ ESPN’s linear TV audience had plummeted 60% year-over-year without live sports. ESPN web traffic was down 50% from February to April.

The series, co-produced by Netflix and ESPN, will begin a five-week re-broadcast on ABC on Saturday. The U.S. rights will belong to Netflix starting mid-July and will head to ESPN+ in July 2021.