Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes, right, hopes to keep the stands full at Reser Stadium this fall as the school is projecting ticket sales of $10.5 million for its athletic teams for 2024-25.

Oregon State is backing up its claim of wanting to fund at a Power conference level, as the school produced an athletics budget of $91.6 million for the 2024-25 academic year.

That is an 8.8% reduction from last year, when Oregon State had revenues and expenses of some $99.7 million each as a member of the Pac-12. The 2025 fiscal year budget goes into effect July 1.

While $91.6 million is among the bottom tier of budgets for schools competing in the Big 10, SEC, ACC and Big 12 conferences, it is substantially larger than what is spent at Group of 5 schools. In 2023, the highest G5 budget was Air Force at $76.5 million.

Oregon State and Washington State lost a major funding source – some $25-30 million/year in media rights — with the collapse of the Pac-12. Ten of the conference’s 12 school have relocated to other Power conferences. OSU and WSU are without a conference, at least for the upcoming school year, and likely 2025-26.

In contrast, Washington State proposed a 2025 fiscal year (FY) budget of $74 million to its Board of Regents, a reduction from $85 million for FY2024.

The bulk of spending reductions include freezing some vacant positions not directly related to athletes’ welfare, and operational cuts. A few examples are position freezes to openings in marketing and facilities. There are also savings such as the $3 million difference between the annual contracts of former OSU football coach Jonathan Smith and his replacement, Trent Bray.

A year ago, Oregon State had 179 employees in athletics. Athletic director Scott Barnes said the number heading into the 2024-25 year is “a few less, not a ton less.”

Here is breakdown of Oregon State’s proposed revenue and expenses for the upcoming year:

Oregon State is projecting an increase of about $1 million in ticket sales revenue over last year, though it has produced more than $10 million many times from 2000-2020. Barnes said several months ago, he had concerns about a budget of $10.5 million in ticket revenue.

“We thought we’d have significant losses in the ticket area, and other areas. But as we look at tickets right now, and our (football) renewal rates, we’ll be in the same neighborhood,” Barnes said.

Also adding to ticket sales is seven home football games. A year ago, the Beavers had six games in Reser Stadium. In 2023 with seven home games but with Reser reduced in capacity due to construction and one of the seven in Portland, OSU had tickets sales of $9.95 million. The school has some 12,000 additional seats, including high-dollar premiums, to sell vs. what it had in 2023.

The FY2025 budget includes $27.33 million in Pac-12/NCAA revenue. The bulk of that figure is a combination of College Football Playoff revenue, NCAA basketball tournament shares and Pac-12 settlement money.

It also includes television revenue from football. Barnes declined to disclose that figure. Asked if he could release that number sometime in the future, Barnes said no.

“We feel good about where sit with it, but we can’t share the numbers. It impacts so much in terms of negotiations and other things,” he said.

The miscellaneous income figure of $13.76 million includes revenue from multimedia rights, concessions, camps, royalties and licensing. The bulk of the $11.53 million in Our Beaver Nation revenue comes from required donations for football season tickets.

Two areas under revenue with sizable increases for FY2025 are lottery proceeds and institutional support.

After losing its annual media rights revenue from the Pac-12, Oregon State lobbied for additional proceeds from the Oregon Lottery. The result is a bump from $530,000 to $7.65 million for the upcoming year.

As for institutional support, OSU athletics will receive an additional $9.5 million from the university to pay for scholarships. Last year, institutional support was $8.4 million.

With FY2024 ending in about two weeks, Barnes said the school will break even. OSU went into FY2024 with a budget of $95.3 million, which eventually evolved to $99.7 million by end of the school year. The FY2023 numbers, reported to the NCAA in January, showed that Oregon State reported a deficit of $6.84 million after producing revenues of $91.59 million.