Holy Cross' NCAA appearance raises $3.2M, school awareness

Holy Cross' NCAA appearance coincided with a five-year extension of an agreement with adidas.

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By Sam Bonacci

The College of the Holy Cross' NCAA March Madness appearance and subsequent win stirred up a great deal of excitement in the city, but also put the Worcester school squarely in the national spotlight for two weeks while generating $3.2 million in revenue for the school and the associated Patriot League.

Wait, did you say $3.2 million?

That's right. The NCAA pays out a certain amount from the tournament revenue to every team for its participation in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Teams earn a payout unit for every game they appear in. Since Holy Cross won its first game in the tournament – by beating Southern 59-55 – and then lost its second game, the school earned two units.

Teams receive payouts for the six years following their tournament appearance. This year, participation in a tournament game is worth $265,791, a figure which is expected to grow annually. So, when all the years are added up, an appearance in one tournament game is worth at least $1.59 million. Since Holy Cross appeared in two games, its tournament earnings will be at least $3.2 million.

Now that still needs to be split up, but once everything is parsed among the Patriot League and other teams in the league, Holy Cross still takes home more than $1.1 million in the next six years.

More than money

While the money is great, being in the national spotlight for two weeks is the kind of exposure that the marketing department of a small, liberal arts school could not pay for, said Nathan Pine, Holy Cross' director of athletics.

“Our entire athletic department and the entire college will see significant returns on this exposure,” Pine said. “Athletics is a lens through which a lot of people first see the campus.”

That level of exposure has a multiplying effect that will play out moving forward, he said.

Snowballing effect

The goal now is to keep the ball rolling, Pine said. Even before the school made it to the NCAA tournament, it had begun reinvesting in sports through new facilities and will have more sportswear for all 27 sports teams through a five-year deal with German apparel manufacturer adidas.

Beyond the investment by the school and its corporate sponsor, Pine said, will be the investment by the student athletes. The challenge has been thrown down for the men's basketball team to repeat their success, but that challenge extends to all other sports at Holy Cross.

“Sometimes it's a team like men's basketball breaking through that starts a snowball effect,” he said.