Football is back; more importantly, Big Ten football has just announced it will be returning this fall. A few other conferences have previously announced that they will be returning, but the big question was, will the Big Ten be returning? Even before the fall seasons started, many Division I schools cut other varsity sports programs due to significant anticipated money losses, the most notable being Stanford cutting over five of their programs. 

As one of the top grossing conferences in college football, the announcement of Big Ten football coming back will ultimately help prevent the schools from losing too much money. Although there will be no fans in attendance, these teams make a serious amount of money from televising, ad sales and merchandise. It was reported that the conference as a whole made more than $750 million in 2018. For most of these schools, football is a significant source of revenue. In 2019, 34% of Indiana University’s total revenue was from media and TV. Not only do regular-season games come with such high revenues, but IU’s bowl game grossed $7.1 million in 2019. 

Although the schools are still running the risk of ending the year early, they are planning on playing at least eight games as of right now, which means most TV contracts will hold and make full payments. The Big Ten has its own network (BTN) which would suffer if football were not played. However, there are still losses from not having fans, as IU reported $6.8 million in football ticket revenue for the 2019 season. 

With the postponed season, the conference has estimated to be $100 million in losses. These losses are all speculation, but it’s safe to say that this year is not only different in appearance but different in revenue. This season will be exciting, but at least we can still cheer on our favorite teams.