Arizona basketball: Wildcats 13th-most valuable college program

The Arizona Wildcats are one of the most valued collegiate basketball teams in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal and an analysis by Ryan Brewer, an assistant professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus.

If the Wildcats would be sold on the open market (ie: bought and sold like a professional franchise), they would command a $123,554,000 valuation. While this seems like a good amount of cash, it’s actually a 47% drop in value from the preceding year when they were valued at $235.43M — sixth highest in the country.

Source: Wall Street Journal

The article doesn’t go in-depth on each team, but says the valuation is based on, “each program’s revenues and expenses with cash-flow adjustments, risk assessments, and growth projections.”

Of the top 20 programs, no school lost more value than Arizona. However, Tucson’s beloved team wasn’t the only one to take a hit. North Carolina lost 35%, Kansas 29%, Michigan 27%, Ohio State 26%, and Syracuse fell 24.5% in their valuations from 2015.

Arizona's men's basketball team brought in $21.7M in revenue while having $11.8M in expenses according to the latest financial figures. Their profit was $9.97M, good for ninth overall (click men's profit, sort under basketball). Their revenues are still some of the highest in college basketball, per a Forbes assessment last year.

While this is a strictly academic study since no program will be or could be sold on the open market, it is interesting to see the changes year to year and how the top programs in the country stack up against each other off the court and inside the economic models.

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