Sectors Feeding on Higher Ed

Why is are workers in higher education wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth over how to pay for athletics programs and art programs? Professional athletics and the entertainment industry are a big part of the problem; they want graduates but don’t help foot the bill.

Professional athletics and the entertainment industry use higher education as an incubator, snatching graduates away like foxes in a henhouse to sustain themselves. Higher ed is the farmer making the sole investment in the development and care of hens and egg production (students). The institutions feed and prepare these students (at great expense to the institution) to become moneymaking machines for professional athletic teams and the entertainment industry.

The Global Institute of Sport reported on Dec. 8, 2024, in “The true size of the global sports industry,” that all-encompassing revenue was $2.65 trillion and was the ninth-largest industry worldwide, encompassing sectors from media, marketing and merchandise to apparel sales, athletes, teams and organizations.

The U.S has the largest share within the global sports sector. A few of the most profitable were recently discussed in Annette DuBois’s article “The Most Profitable Sports in the United States: Where (and how) the Money Flows.” She reported that the National Football League surpassed $23 billion in total revenues in 2024, and Major League Baseball reported an all-time record of $12.1 billion in gross revenues for 2024. The National Basketball Association’s 30 franchises collectively generated over $11 billion in 2023–24 and the National Hockey League expected revenues exceeding $6.6 billion for the 2024–25 season.

Furthermore, the U.S. sports industry benefits significantly from taxpayer funds. In Andrew Zimbalist’s Sept. 4, 2023, article, “Stadiums as Public Investments,” for Econofact, he reports, “Between 1970 and 2020, state and local governments devoted approximately $33 billion in public funds to construct major-league sports venues in the United States and Canada.”

He also asserts, “Scholarly econometric studies on the impact of professional sports stadiums are almost unanimous in their conclusion that they do not promote employment or per capita income growth.” Most of the revenue benefits the franchise.

Even more pointedly, professional athletics directly benefits from the education, training, coaching and preparation provided to aspiring athletes and to professionals in athletics management, sports medicine, sports therapy and trainers, yet makes no substantive philanthropic contributions to higher education. And, contrary to the public’s belief, most college and university athletic programs are not profitable on their own. Each year, the NCAA issues an annual report on the finances of intercollegiate athletics. The 10-year trend (2014 to 2024) identifies that only 20 to 25 of more than 360 Division I programs had revenues exceeding expenses. No Division II or III program had revenues exceeding expenses. There are 1,102 Division I, II and III schools. The effects of COVID-19 on institutional budgets brought the issue of expenses to the forefront in ways never seen before. According to a 2020 ESPN article by Aishwarya Kumar, 352 NCAA teams were cut from colleges and universities between March 11 and Nov. 6, 2020.

The number of teams cut from athletic programs has continued to rise due to budgetary constraints. In addition, recent court cases have focused on the profitability of sports programs and violations of student athletes’ rights. In NCAA v. Alston et al., the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the NCAA could not bar student athletes from being paid. In O’Bannon v. NCAA, the court ruled in favor of O’Bannon regarding using a student-athlete’s likeness for commercial purposes. (See here for analysis in Law In Sport by James Wolohan.)

According to Bloomberg Law’s July 7, 2025, article by Alexia Massoud, “NCAA Settlement Forces Cuts to College Teams in Olympic Sports,” due to outcomes of the lawsuits, “Roughly 41 Olympic sports programs have been cut across NCAA Division I, affecting at least 1,000 student-athletes after the settlement was announced by the NCAA in May 2024, said Sam Seemes, CEO of the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.” But, alas, the trillion-dollar professional sports industry as a whole is nowhere to be seen helping college and university athletic programs or offsetting payments to student-athletes.

Likewise, the film, music and entertainment sectors are one of the largest U.S. cultural industries, a significant contributor to the GDP and a large pipeline consumer of higher education. It encompasses theatrical film production and distribution; streaming video and home entertainment; recorded music (labels, streaming, physical); live entertainment (concerts, touring, ticketing); and associated creative industries (television, gaming and advertising-supported content). For graduates of film schools, communication programs, music technology programs, performing arts conservatories and related fields, the sector is the primary destination for employment.

“The U.S. media and entertainment industry is the world’s largest, generating $649 billion in 2023 (of the $2.8 trillion global M&E market) and projected to reach $808 billion by 2028 at an average annual growth rate of 4.3 percent,” as detailed in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s 2024 Media & Entertainment Sector Overview.

“The U.S. recorded music industry revenue reached $17.7 billion at estimated retail value in 2024, a 3.3 percent increase over 2023’s $17.1 billion (which itself was an 8% increase over 2022 and an all-time high at the time),” as reported by the Recording Industry Association of America in its March 2025 report “2024 Year-End Music Industry Revenue Report.” In addition, the U.S. recorded music industry has now posted nine consecutive years of growth (2016 to 2024).

“Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest live-entertainment company, reported $22.7 billion in total revenue for 2023, a 36% increase over 2022, driven by record concert attendance, ticket sales and sponsorship,” as explained in J.R. Lind’s Feb. 22, 2024, article, “Live Nation Reports Record $22.7B Revenue in 2023,” published by Pollstar.

Like the professional sports sector, the film, music and entertainment industry hires college and university graduates. But at what expense to the institutions? The majors supporting the pipeline produce the greatest budgetary strain. These majors require studios, high square footage per student and specialized supplies, equipment and other materials (e.g., sets and costumes). The performing arts rely heavily on individual applied lessons and small workshop critique sessions. Film production degrees require expensive, rapidly depreciating assets (cameras, lighting rigs, professional editing and soundstage facilities). Music departments have high costs for tuning and maintaining pianos, acoustic instruments and soundproof practice space. This all demands massive square footage while generating low credit-hour counts.

As with professional athletics, the entertainment sector’s primary relationship to higher education is as a dependent consumer (eggs grown and hatched at the expense of the farmer), not as a systematically tracked major corporate philanthropic funder. The Voluntary Support of Education reporting does not capture corporate gifts by sectors. Some companies have funded a few targeted performance venues and research (technology R&D, audience and consumer, IP and copyright, and economic impact). It’s clearly not enough, as programs continue to be cut across the humanities, precisely where the entertainment industry gains and thereby contributes to GDP. The National Center for Education Statistics notes a downward trend in humanities degrees, from 16.8 percent in 2014 to 12.5 percent in 2024.

Higher education needs to stop letting itself be gaslighted into taking blame for a lack of funding for athletics and the arts. The central issue is who should bear responsibility for supporting higher education, because it provides an invaluable service and a better quality of life. Pressure must be applied to those who share that responsibility, including those who enjoy games played by the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and others and those who love movies, music, concerts and other performances, by insisting that these sectors use their staggering profits to support higher education. Put pressure where it belongs—on professional sports and the entertainment industry and everyone who enjoys them.