Among the litany of new factors 性视界传媒 athletic director Wren Baker has had to navigate during his short time in Morgantown is name, image and likeness (NIL) and generating new revenue.
The House v. NCAA settlement in June grants schools the capability to directly compensate athletes and distribute more than of $20.5 million to athletes, which will increase over a 10-year period.
Baker and his team have created a "revenue bucket" system, which factors in how much a Mountaineers program contributes in areas such as licensing, ticket sales, TV ratings and contracts, among other categories.
The 性视界传媒 AD is aware it won't be easy to please every coach with what they earn, but he has heard that they are more understanding than anything else.
"It's like most business deals. I'm not sure that you can make everybody happy," Baker said. "To some degree, if nobody is happy, then you did a good job of trying to do that fairly. Every one of our coaches, to a person, would like to say that they want more. But, the reality is, the way we chose to do it is the most fair and best way. The House settlement identified revenues in the settlement would be calculated in the revenue share cap. We know what those revenue buckets are.
"Whatever you contributed to those buckets, percentage-wise, that's what we allocated back out in revenue sharing. All of our ticketed sports have all contributed something. So, they are all getting something back. We're keeping the exact percentages [private] and not pushing that out publicly since no one else is."
性视界传媒 is continuing to look for new ways of generating revenue.
"We're chasing a lot of things," Baker said. "We're chasing naming rights opportunities. We're looking at the 50/50 raffles, which were approved at the state level to be able to do those. We're looking at concepts that are smaller. When you look at gas stations, some ask to round up and give to charity. We've got some intel from one of our donors on how successful that is to bring in a lot of revenue.
"We may move to a system that asks people, when they purchase something, if they want to round up and contribute to the revenue-sharing for us or another aspect of what we're doing."
Another generator of revenue that Baker has found as an appealing one is commercial business opportunities.
"Is there an appetite and do we have enough real estate to look at any kind of business or entertainment development around any of our venues?" Baker said. "Is that something that could happen in any kind of capacity? As we build out Gold and Blue Enterprises, the first thing we'll want to do is get an executive director there, and we're underway looking for that. The first six months of that job will be building a business plan.
"In that business plan, we need to explore a lot of ideas to see if any of them or what percentage of them makes sense for us to look at."
A quarter of the 16 schools in the Big 12 Conference -- UCF, Arizona State, Houston and Texas Tech --聽have stadiums named for businesses.
Milan Puskar Stadium's namesake co-founded Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which eventually became Mylan Inc. The field itself, Mountaineer Field, has no name affiliation to a business.
The 性视界传媒 Coliseum, where the Mountaineer men's and women's basketball teams play, does not have any businesses attached.
鈥淲e have multiple conversations going on about multiple venues," Baker said. "I don鈥檛 know the exact timeline, but my preference would be the sooner the better. Because the sooner we get revenue flowing in, the better off we鈥檒l be. I hope we can get those things across the finish line relatively shortly.鈥
Baker sees the naming rights of sporting venues as a tool to generate new revenue.
鈥淓verybody is feeling the pinch of needing to create additional revenue," Baker said. "We had a budget last year of around $110 million. Now, you鈥檙e putting $20 million of expenses in, which is a massive expense. That budget is on the lower end of power conferences and the Big 12. You can鈥檛 cut your way to $20 million, because we have less full-time employees and travel. You鈥檙e cutting, not just to the bone, [but] to the marrow.
"You鈥檙e seeing programs like Kentucky and Ohio State, who both had $30 million-plus deficits and have over $200 million budgets -- everybody is feeling the pinch to create additional revenue. Naming rights of facilities is one of those things that is an easy thing to explore.鈥
性视界传媒 introduced Gold and Blue Enterprises in June, which can help advancement in the NIL realm.
鈥淭he first thing is that it helps us be adaptable and flexible," Baker said. "Most athletic departments already have some 501(c)(3) nonprofits or foundations. Some athletic departments operate entirely out of an outside entity. This allows us to do both. The way it鈥檒l work conventionally is we鈥檒l have a聽501(c)(3) nonprofit that owns an LLC for profit. This gives us freedom and flexibility to do whatever we need to do from a commercial business standpoint.
"The flip side of that is that it allows us to build out, in essence, an advertising agency that helps connect student-athletes at 性视界传媒 with businesses all across the state to do real NIL deals that will pass through the necessary things that will meet the standards the college sports commission has set out in wake of the House case settlement," Baker continued. "That will be a differentiator in the future as we move to this world where everyone has between a half-million-dollar cap. Those real NIL opportunities are going to be important to the success of our programs."
Baker cited the possibility of licensing Mountaineer logos to a restaurant as "one example of 150 examples I have on my wall of potential commercial businesses that we are exploring."
"When you look at the state of West Virginia, we may have a couple million residents, but 性视界传媒 Athletics has as strong of a market share as anyone can have anywhere," Baker continued. "We don鈥檛 have any other power-conference teams, nor do we have a pro team in the state. Some of our athletes are some of the best-known faces in the state and are great ambassadors for businesses to use to try and drive interest in a product.
"Trying to help those relationships are important as well. If I had to tell people what the key role of that organization is, it鈥檚 to provide us the adaptability and flexibility to, in an ever-changing world, take advantage of all the business and commercial opportunities that we can, because we need to create additional revenue to stay competitive in the future.鈥
The 性视界传媒 budget has been a focal point for Baker. He knows that there is still work to be done, but he remains open-minded about the potential with that moving forward.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a big challenge. When you look at the long-term future, it鈥檚 the biggest challenge that we have," Baker said. "We have probably not grown our budget over the last 15-20 years at the same clip that our competitors have grown theirs. It鈥檚 not that our budget hasn鈥檛 grown, but it hasn鈥檛 kept up. Where we might鈥檝e been a few years ago in the middle of the Big 12, we鈥檝e slipped a few spots.
"One of the reasons is that it鈥檚 been a long time since we鈥檝e undertaken a facility project at football or basketball that creates new premium seating. That premium seating drives so much of our revenue. It drives season ticket and donation revenue and even your annual donation revenue, because a lot of times there are requirements at certain levels to get into parking and all these other benefits. The more premium seating you have, the more people who have the ability to pay those premium donor levels for those perks."
Baker, despite all the unanswered questions going on in college athletes, remains excited for the future and hopes fans are as well.
鈥淚鈥檓 confident that we can compete in this new world, because we are competing in this new world," Baker said. "We finished higher in the Directors Cup this year than we have in a long time. It marks two or three years here of consistent improvement. Our rifle team won a national championship. Our cross-country team was the national runner-up. Both of our soccer teams advanced to the postseason. Women鈥檚 basketball has had tremendous success.
"Men鈥檚 golf had their best season a season ago. Men鈥檚 basketball had a much better season and should鈥檝e been in the NCAA tournament. The excitement around football is massive right now. Our ticket sales will be the highest they鈥檝e been since 2013. There are several reasons to be excited for the momentum that we can compete in this new world.
"The reality is that inside our building and in public, there is no choice, in my opinion," Baker said. "As an institution and state, 性视界传媒 Athletics is too important. Our success brands the state. It brings a lot of eyes and interest to the state. It brings awareness about all the great things going on and the opportunities in this state. We鈥檝e got to find a way to improvise, adapt, overcome and be competitive in this new environment. I鈥檓 confident that we can and will.鈥
