…or I should ask: what sports franchise earns the highest gross profit from sales of merchandise? (per year perhaps?) for 2005? 2004? 2003?
‘Sports franchise’ includes MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and Div 1 NCAA teams.
A friend of mine alleges that a certain university (NCAA) has higher gross sales than any individual professional sports team. However, I am skeptical. So, what’s the Straight Dope?
What certain university would that be, or is there a reason to keep it anonymous?
University of Kentucky
No reason to keep it anonymous. :shrug:
My guess is that the “mystery team” is Notre Dame … though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the University of Miami is in that class now.
Probably not. I’d be skeptical, too.
The OP’s question is somewhat ambiguous, though, because how do you define “Gross profit”? For instance, some sports leagues share all marketing and merchandising money, in whole or in part. So it is entirely possible that the most popular sports team in terms of merchandising sales could be, say, the Dallas Cowboys, but the Dallas Cowboys themselves do not see all that money.
You have a good point RickJay. So, what question should I ask instead to eliminate ambliguity?
Is net profit more easily defined?
Yep, color me skeptical of that one…more people are going to wear UK gear than Notre Dame or U of Miami gear!!!
Texas is the #1 NCAA school … http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/big12/2006-01-19-texas-sales_x.htm
Kentucky didn’t even make the top 10.
I suspect that worldwide a good deal of the merchandise is bootlegged. My first thought fromm observation of many a Third World market as well as Americans just walking around is the New York Yankees. I also suspect that Manchester United would be a strong guess if you don’t want to run on the assumption it has to be an American franchise. I’d also be surprised if more than one or two of the top ten American teams were from colleges.
The last paragraph of the OP mentioned highest gross sales. That seems less ambiguous, although even then, how do you define that? Is it for only university- or team-owned stores, or all retailers?
I have seen that Worldwide:
Unfortunately I saw this last year in Newsprint and I could be mis-remembering.
I can’t find a match in google or ESPN.
Jim
<crosses fingers and hopes this post gets submitted after many failed attempts>
You are thinking in terms of college football powerhouses. Univ of Kentucky is historically a college basketball powerhouse, although the team is not so this season. UK has more all time wins than any other college b-ball team and the highest home winning percentage all in, IIRC. The state (or ‘commonwealth’ as they say here) of Kentucky lacks pro sports teams and so many people within the population are rabidly enthused with UK basketball. Nonetheless, I still had good reason to be skeptical.
Looks like aktep provided a definite quantitative answer to top college merchandising royalties in terms of the current academic term. If UK ever held this title, then it would have likely been in the late 90s I suppose when the b-ball won national championships in '96 and '98. So, it’s possible my friend had overheard old data from those days.
I still doubt the sales of top college teams eclipse those of the top pro teams.
Preview screen didn’t load before during several attempts…so here is my mostly corrected post:
You are thinking in terms of college football powerhouses. Univ of Kentucky is historically a college basketball powerhouse, although the team is not so hot this season. UK has more all time wins than any other college b-ball team and the highest home winning percentage all time, IIRC. The state (or ‘commonwealth’ as they say here) of Kentucky lacks pro sports teams and so many people within the population are rabidly enthused with UK basketball. Nonetheless, I still had good reason to be skeptical.
Looks like aktep provided a definite quantitative answer to top college merchandising royalties in terms of the current academic term. If UK ever held this title, then it would have likely been in the late 90s I suppose when the b-ball team won national championships in '96 and '98. So, it’s possible my friend had overheard old data from those days.
I still doubt the sales of top college teams eclipse those of the top pro teams.
Perhaps it might also depend on how merchandise is defined. I could easily see colleges dominating if it includes all clothing and items with the school’s name on it. At some of the large schools, I can see many students who have not only clothing with the school’s name, but also pencils/notebooks with the school’s name on them. Here is a site which shows how much Florida State University merchandise is available for purchase. Also, how about the college license plates?
It’s quite possible that a college team sells more merchandise than a pro sports team. Schools like Tennessee, and North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, and USC sell a lot of stuff, especially if you don’t limit it to sports merchandise. Texas football (I’d imagine football being the most profitable sector) led this year with revenue of $53.2 million, and a profit of $38.7 million, during the fiscal year that ended in August (they led in licensing also). This article states that the college apparel industry is a $3 billion-a-year business, but that UConn “sold $21 million in licensed merchandise in 2003-04 and took in more than $1 million in royalties, jumping into the top 25 highest-earning schools.” (more stats)
This is a hard question to answer. I limited the search to some of the most valuable franchises, which I found here. I thought the Yankees would probably sell more than anyone else (if you include NASCAR, they sell $2 billion of merchandise per year). The Yankees made 168 million in “brand management” last year. If a significant percentage of that were merchandise, they would easily make more than any college.
That article only included the schools represented by Collegiate Licensing Co., though, so it’s possible that someone else had higher royalties.
Here’s a list of all CLC clients. A quick look notices that Southern Cal, UCLA, California, Virginia Tech, and Ohio State are not CLC clients, but I don’t know that these schools represent a major threat to the sales records of the CLC schools (USC and Ohio State are referenced in the above article, and do not come close).
Here’s a list of top CLC schools for 2004-2005. Notice that:
I’m not surprised that it would be Carolina. In addition to basketball, there is women’s soccer. Go to a girls tournament someday - it seems that half of the participants have at least one piece of NC gear on.
I rarely see anyone wearing Kentucky logoed clothing. I see more Harvard swetshirts than Kentucky ones.