The University of Texas athletic department posted a $23.3 million loss for the 2025 fiscal year - and believe it or not, that’s actually better than they expected.
This shortfall, while eye-catching on paper, was part of a larger, calculated financial strategy tied to the Longhorns’ high-profile move from the Big 12 to the SEC. With nearly $376 million in expenses - a new record for a single athletic department - and $353 million in revenue, Texas knew it would be operating in the red for the year. But the $23.3 million loss came in well below the $47 million deficit the school had budgeted for, which Texas officials are chalking up as a win in the long game.
At the heart of this financial dip is the transitional agreement Texas and Oklahoma made with the SEC to join the conference in 2024, a year earlier than originally planned. That early entry came at a cost: a significantly reduced conference revenue share.
While the other 14 SEC schools received a full $60.1 million distribution from the league, Texas and Oklahoma each took home just $12.5 million. That $47.6 million difference was always going to sting - but Texas had planned for it.
Rob Novak, Texas’ Chief Financial Officer, has been transparent about this process. He noted that the school had banked over $46 million in surpluses across the previous three fiscal years in anticipation of this shortfall.
Even after this year's loss, Texas still has more than $30 million in reserve. That kind of financial foresight is rare in college athletics, where budgets are often reactive rather than proactive.
“It’s not Whack-A-Mole to balance a budget,” Novak said. “It’s, ‘What does this look like long-term?’”
That long-term vision includes a full SEC revenue share starting in the 2026 fiscal year. And by 2027, Texas will start seeing the impact of the SEC’s massive media rights deal with ESPN - a 10-year, $3 billion agreement that’s expected to further boost conference payouts.
But the SEC move wasn’t the only factor in this year’s deficit. Texas also saw a significant drop in media rights revenue, in part due to the sunsetting of the Longhorn Network as a standalone platform.
With ESPN now holding the rights to live events, Texas brought in about $21 million less from media rights than it did the previous year. In 2024, the Longhorn Network alone had generated $15.6 million.
Still, the biggest spending jumps came in two areas: facilities and promotion. Texas poured more than $94 million into debt service for athletic facilities - an increase of about $15 million from the previous year.
That includes ongoing renovations at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and payments on a new training facility for basketball and rowing. These projects, while costly, are also driving a surge in donor contributions.
Donations climbed by roughly $34 million year-over-year, hitting nearly $168 million for the 2025 fiscal year.
“We have a bunch of really big capital projects,” Novak said. “And so it’ll continue to look like this for the next five or six years while we pay off all those big projects.”
On the marketing side, Texas made a bold push, increasing spending on fundraising, promotions, and fan engagement by more than $23 million. The total hit $35 million, thanks in part to investments in equipment for ESPN3 streaming - another byproduct of the SEC transition - and one-time upgrades to the football gameday experience.
And while there were losses, there were also bright spots. Ticket revenue jumped by $10 million, thanks in large part to marquee home matchups against SEC heavyweights like Georgia and Florida. The football program continues to be the engine of Texas athletics, generating nearly $107 million in profit - the only program on campus to finish in the black.
Men’s basketball, typically a revenue driver at major programs, took a hit this year. Texas lost nearly $5 million after parting ways with head coach Rodney Terry and paying a buyout to land Sean Miller from Xavier.
One area where spending is expected to rise significantly next year: athlete revenue sharing. The new NCAA rules only kicked in near the end of the 2025 fiscal year, so Texas shared just $3 million with its athletes. That number is projected to jump to around $20 million in fiscal year 2026.
So yes, Texas lost money in 2025. But the numbers tell a story of a program investing heavily in its future - from facilities to media infrastructure to conference realignment. The Longhorns are betting big on the SEC era, and early signs suggest that bet could pay off in a big way.