Florida Atlantic’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Run Is Helping Financially, Too

On Thursday night, the Florida Atlantic University Alumni Association hosted an event before the Owls’ NCAA men’s basketball tournament game in New York City. About 400 alumni attended the gathering at 5th & Mad, a bar and restaurant a few block from Madison Square Garden.

A few hours later, nearing midnight, many of those same people chanted “FAU! FAU! FAU!” at MSG after the Owls defeated Tennessee, 62-55, to advance to face Kansas State in Saturday’s East Region final.

“We joked that when we first started five years ago, the basketball arena may not have had 400 people in the whole arena,” said Brian White, Florida Atlantic’s athletics director. “It’s come a long way.”

Florida Atlantic is not only succeeding on the court. The victories and television exposure have helped the University and athletics department from a financial perspective, as well.

The Owls had only made one NCAA tournament appearance before this season, losing in the first round in 2002. This month, they have won three tournament games, or three “units” in NCAA parlance. The NCAA awards a unit for each game in the tournament. A unit from the 2021 tournament was worth more than $337,000 each year for a six-year period, or more than $2 million total, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Conferences receive the units and are encouraged to distribute the money to their member schools, although smaller leagues typically use the money to fund its operations. White wouldn’t say how much money Florida Atlantic will keep from the units, and it complicates things that the Owls are switching from Conference USA to the American Athletic Conference in the fall.

Still, the Owls will benefit in other ways, according to White, as interest in the program has reached levels never seen before.

Florida Atlantic, like all schools, received an allotment of 1,000 tickets from the NCAA for their East Region games. More than 7,000 people requested tickets, leaving a large percentage searching for other ways to secure tickets such as through the secondary online marketplaces.

White said he’s seen an increase in merchandise sales and an influx of donations to the athletics department and the University as a whole, and he added the team could sell out its season tickets for next season, which was unheard of in previous seasons.

The Owls averaged 1,400 fans at its 19 home games last season. This season, they had the seven largest home crowds in program history, with sellout crowds of more than 2,900 fans at each of its final seven home games in January and February.

The fan support has increased since then as the Owls won the Conference USA title and their first three NCAA tournament games. And then there’s the free publicity of playing nationally televised games and reaching an audience that never had heard of Florida Atlantic.

“(The NCAA tournament run) helps us in every way imaginable,” White said. “The reason you have Division 1 sports is to be the front porch of the institution and provide that exposure…The exposure FAU athletics provides the University is probably the biggest part, and a run like this greatly enhances that exposure.”

White arrived at Florida Atlantic in March 2018 having been around college athletics his entire life. His father, Kevin, was the athletics director at Duke before retiring last year and also was an AD at Arizona State, Notre Dame and other schools. White’s brother, Danny, is the AD at Tennessee and previously served in the same role at the University of Buffalo and the University of Central Florida. And White’s other brother, Mike, is Georgia’s men’s basketball coach.

After graduating from Notre Dame in 2006, Brian White worked for sports marketing agency IMG College for several years before following in his father’s and brothers’ footsteps and working for colleges. He served in external relations and fundraising roles at Tulsa, Army, Louisiana Tech and Missouri.

When considering the Florida Atlantic job, White was intrigued by the school’s location in ritzy Boca Raton and its proximity to Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, where plenty of talented young football players and other athletes reside.

“The idea of going to a growing, younger school in the state of Florida was appealing,” White said. “And in talking to Florida Atlantic, we saw the University just has great ambition from the Board of Trustees to the leadership. There’s great ambition for improving the school, growing the school and the value of doing that through athletics. We’ve seen that time and time again at other institutions, how Universities have grown through athletics.”

Since coming on board, White has been active in the community, promoting the school and making connections with alumni and people who live nearby. White helped secure a $7.5 million gift commitment in November from Eleanor R. Baldwin, a longtime Boca Raton resident whose name is adorned on the basketball arena. And in December, Michelle and Michael Hagerty made a $5 million gift commitment for renovating the athletic facilities. The Hagerty family also gave a $2.5 million gift two years ago to support the FAU football program.

White said most of the large gifts have come from people who live in Boca Raton but did not attend FAU, which opened in 1961 and only began playing Division 1 basketball in 1993. FAU is known as a commuter school, but it has more than 29,000 students and recently opened two new dorms and plans on opening more to encourage students to live on-campus.

“The fundraising numbers have really gone up exponentially each year,” White said. “That’s thanks to a good staff and a great community and a growing brand of the school. This community in South Florida and Boca Raton, there’s so much wealth there. They’re embracing more and more FAU as their hometown team.”

On Saturday, a national television audience will be watching as Florida Atlantic looks to defeat Kansas State and advance to its first Final Four. The Wildcats play in the mighty Big 12 Conference and generated nearly $10.2 million in men’s basketball revenue from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022. That compares with nearly $2.7 million in revenue for Florida Atlantic’s men’s basketball team during that time period.

Still, the Owls are accustomed to facing (and defeating) schools with larger financial means: Memphis, their first round opponent, generated $13.7 million in men’s basketball revenue, while Tennessee, their Sweet 16 opponent, generated nearly $16.1 million.

Florida Atlantic may never reach the revenue levels of Power Five conference schools, but it’s trending in the right direction, and this NCAA tournament run can only help the school’s ambitions.

“Our athletics program is so young,” White said. “That’s why maybe our brand hasn’t been what it could be. We talk about ourselves a lot as the up and coming stock. We’re not the mature brand, but we’re the up and coming stock that maybe most people don’t know about.”

He added: “We’re in a great recruiting area, there’s tremendous wealth, and Boca Raton is a beautiful place to live. We just think there’s great potential across the board.”