For the third consecutive fiscal year, the University of Washington athletic department will rely on an advance payment from the Big Ten and a loan from the university’s invested funds to cover another operating deficit.
As it did in the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, UW athletics will ask the Board of Regents at its meeting next week to approve another $10 million, interest-free advance media-rights payment from the Big Ten and a loan of more than $14 million from the school’s Capital Assets Pool (CAP) to help offset a projected cash-flow deficit of nearly $16 million — as well as the principal portion of its debt-service payment on the loans that funded the renovation of Husky Stadium and Husky Ballpark — in FY27.
As part of the athletic department’s proposed FY27 budget, the action item also asks the board to waive institutional overhead payments and approve campus support from “non-state sources” for athlete health and wellness, and “to partially offset planned financial aid expenditures incurred by [athletics] specifically in support of Olympic sport student athletes.”
Though it’s no secret by now, documents attached to the meeting agenda make clear that Washington’s athletics budget will be strained for the foreseeable future. The school expects expenses to outpace revenues “through at least FY30,” before UW expects to receive a full share of Big Ten media-rights money on the league’s next contract beginning in FY31.
Even setting aside new athlete revenue-share payments, “costs related to operating in the Big Ten exceed historic levels experienced in the Pac-12,” according to the document.