Don’t be so sure. Consider that Colleges have the benefit of having several sports for which to sell merchandise, most notably mens basketball and football. Universities such as Michigan, Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, Florida and Wisconsin that have huge student and alumni bases and have been steadily notable in two or more sports get coverage and attendance figures that most professional franchises can’t touch. The mobility of alumni can tend to create wider geographic appeal as well.
Nonetheless, Kentucky was probably never close to it. They have always been a basketball school and even with their sucess still never had the braod appeal that bigger universities in bigger states had. I find it hard to believe that Kentucky ever surpassed Notre Dame, Michigan or Texas in sales.
do a search on affordable universities. sometime in pa t few weeks. iirc, it was university of kentucky that had huge franchise sales and used the money to significantly bring down tuition costs.
new zealand all blacks is a pretty serious franchise too
I found a couple of things. According to the Sports Business Journal, sales of licensed sports merchandise broke down this way:
NFL: $2.5 billion
All colleges: $2.5 billion
MLB: $2.3 billion
NASCAR: $1.2 billion
NBA: $1.0 billion
NHL: $900 million
Other: $100 million
Consider there are far fewer pro sports teams than college teams, I would doubt any one college comes close to the sales of the popular pro sports teams.
Plunkett Research Ltd. lists the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, and the New England Patriots as the leaders in sales of sports merchandise. That is all that is listed without buying a subscription. They also say the Chicago Bulls, the leader in sports merchandise 10 years ago barely registers on the radar screen today.
I would say the Toronto Maple Leafs have got to be up there on the merchandise sales ranking. They’ve got 9/10 of the Ontario market not to mention the rest of Canada and supporters throughout the United States. Watch an away Leafs game and you will inevitably see Toronto jerseys in the crowd.
Also, Chelsea FC would be quickly pushing up the sales list these days. But for all around sales I would have to guess Celtic, Man U, and the Yankees to be the biggest sales earners - at least they’d have the largest international markets.