Maryland Football Ticket Revenue Falls to Lowest in Big Ten Era
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It's been a rough couple years for the Maryland football program. Two straight 4-8 seasons, each with only one Big Ten victory, have put the Terps a strike away from a complete teardown.
Those struggles have also extended into the financial side of things.
A report from Scott Dochterman of The Athletic revealed how much revenue Big Ten teams took home at the box office during the 2024-25 fiscal year, and Maryland is at the very bottom.
Among the conference's 16 public schools, Maryland brought in the least amount of football ticket revenue by far, with a meager $5 million final tally. They haven't performed that poorly since 2012 - their final season in the ACC.
Rutgers, the next-worst, brought in $9.2 million, and UCLA ammassed $10.8 million.
At the top of the list, Michigan and Ohio State both cracked $67 million in their 100k seat shrines, followed by Penn State, Nebraska, and Oregon.
Northwestern and USC's figures were not disclosed because they are private schools.
The Terps had the conference's second-lowest average attendance at 36,040, ahead of only Northwestern's temporary 11,000 seat stadium.
They didn't have the benefit of many big opponents - only the USC game came close to selling out with a crowd of 43,013.
Even for a basketball-centric school like Maryland, football is an incredibly important revenue driver. They've had a hard time maintaining consistency in that regard, as shown by their yearly averages under head coach Mike Locksley:
Season | Average Attendance | Percent Filled |
|---|---|---|
2019 | 37,812 | 81.9% |
2020 | 0 (COVID Restricted) | N/A |
2021 | 38,069 | 82.4% |
2022 | 31,934 | 69.1% |
2023 | 40,314 | 87.3% |
2024 | 36,040 | 78.0% |
2025 | 40,765 | 88.1% |
Those fluctuating numbers have contributed to one ugly constant - the athletic department as a whole being near or in the red.
Maryland was one of four Big Ten institutions to report a deficit in athletics during the last fiscal year, down from eight in 2023-24. According to Xavier Board of The Diamondback, Maryland had approximately $124 million in overall athletic revenue and $128 million in expenses.
The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database shows the Terps had $127.8 million in revenue and $132.8 million in expenses during 2023-24, so this would be about a million-dollar improvement.
Yet it would still be the fourth time in the last five fiscal years that Maryland operated at a deficit:
Over that same period, football spending across the conference has exploded.
While combined salaries for Locksley and the rest of his coaching staff have remained at about $3 million below the Big Ten average, other aspects are rapidly falling behind.
Between FY 2022 and 2024, the spending gap between Maryland and the average Big Ten program more than doubled, now sitting at over $20 million.
While this is a lot of information to process, the main financial takeaways should be:
- Maryland Athletics faces significant challenges in competing across the Big Ten due to their budget shortfall.
- Those issues are more prevalent in football, where the spending gap is already enormous and only growing larger.
- While football ticket revenue is a small piece of the total, Maryland's figure is jarringly low compared to their peers. Even matching the second-worst reported figure would get them out of their deficit.
The good news is that Maryland's athletic-related debt has been steadily declining. While the University owed nearly $75 million upon moving to the Big Ten in 2013, that figure has since decreased down to $8 million.
Director of Athletics James E. Smith faces a critical second year leading the department. Men's basketball is coming off its worst season since the 1980s - and lowest attendance at Xfinity Center - making it even more important that the other revenue-generating Terps' sport capitalizes on whatever hype it can.
With football bringing in local five-star recruit Zion Elee - Maryland's highest-ever rated prospect - and keeping star QB Malik Washington on board, there is an opportunity to build off last year's improvements at the gates.
But it will take proper investment in marketing, and some early positives on the field, to break the trend of down even years.
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Mike joined Maryland On SI with over four years of sportswriting experience. He started off his career in Syracuse on the Orange football beat, where he was featured on CBS Sports' Cover 3 Podcast and local ESPN sports talk radio. After that, he had a brief stint reporting on Major League Baseball before returning to college sports.
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