Since the premise of the article is regarding whether Division I athletic departments in Louisiana need sales tax revenue (i.e. a subsidy), I was curious about how much (if any) subsidies Louisiana Division I athletic departments already receive. To answer this I am going to use the Membership Financial Reporting System income and expense data that Division I athletic departments are required to submit to the NCAA. If you are interested in seeing LSU's 2025 report - click here. I am able to request many of these reports via public records requests, but since universities such as Tulane are private, they will not be part of the analysis.
I am going to look at how much each athletic department received in subsidies for fiscal years 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 (the most recent year of athletic department financial data that is currently available). Subsidies are the aggregate of Direct State or Other Government Support, Student Fees, Direct Institutional Support, Indirect Institutional Support and Indirect Institutional Support - Athletic
Facilities Debt Service, Lease and Rental Fees. I am presenting the nominal values (i.e. no adjustment has been made for inflation).
First, let's take a look at four of the five (again, Tulane is private and not subject to public records requests) Football Bowl Subdivision athletic departments total subsidy numbers. As you can see below, LSU does not allocate any subsidies to their athletic department, while Louisiana (formerly known as Louisiana LaFayette) has been allocating nearly $20 million per fiscal year over the last four seasons.
Second, let's take a look at the six FCS and one no-football (LSU New Orleans formerly known as New Orleans) Division I athletic departments total subsidy numbers. To keep the chart more readable, I will divide these into two charts.
The first is with McNeese State, Northwestern State, Southeastern Louisiana State and Southern. Each athletic department is allocated over $5 million in subsidies for each fiscal year already. While not as much as most of the FBS schools, it is still a sizable outlay to each athletic department.
The second is with Grambling State, LSU New Orleans (formerly New Orleans) and Nicholls State. As you can see, each receives subsidies as well, although smaller than the group directly above.
