How Boone Pickens’ Donations Impacted the Future Financials of OSU Athletics

When people asked T. Boone Pickens about his donation to OSU and whether or not he got his money worth out of it, he’s always responded emphatically that he felt like he did.

I thought it would be interesting to dig into the financials of OSU athletics before and after his donation — as well as before and after the renovations at Boone Pickens Stadium — to see if the investment really did sort “pay off.” Meaning, how did OSU’s football and overall revenue grow after it?

It was 2003 when Pickens made his initial $70M donation to OSU with $20M dedicated to the football stadium renovation. This was followed up in 2006 with his massive $165 million donation leading to the complete reconstruction of Boone Pickens Stadium. The stadium was all completed and dedicated in 2009.

The financial statements available from OSU go back to 2003 and I developed this chart based on them.

When looking at this I wanted to see it from a few different angles.

1. How did it impact the overall athletic budget?

Boone Pickens injected millions into the operating budget of the school immediately with his donations, but I wanted to look at the overall trend of the budget in the years after he started giving. Did revenues grow dramatically after his donation?

Following the announcement of the first gift, revenue for the athletic department was higher than in the year prior on average. The only area where we see dramatic downturns comparative to years prior is in years where there are very large financial contributions, which if accounted for usually will still show a gradual uptick in the growth of the athletic department budget.

Keep in mind all this was happening while OSU was taking a bit of a hit in its other revenue sport as basketball went from a Final Four team in 2004 to one that has struggled to fill the stands as of late.

Media rights and conference distributions have grown at a historic rate in recent years and that certainly has to be recognized as a factor, but since the announcement of Boone Picken’s $70 million dollar donation, the yearly athletic department budget has more than doubled from $41.6M to $88.5M.

2. How did it impact football revenue?

I view this as the more direct item to look at as far as financial impact. It paints a somewhat clearer picture of how his donation changed revenue for the athletic department. Specifically how expanding the stadium helped generate additional ticket sales and other revenue specific to football. As the table above shows, revenue pretty consistently grew each season, but it’s of note that conference revenues play a role in that. I considered that in this table.

Even accounting for growing media rights money, overall revenues from football operations have grown a lot. From 2003 to 2008 they averaged $12.8M. From the dedication of BPS in 2009 to 2019 it was $24.4M, showing a pretty consistent upward trend.

Sports don’t operate in a vacuum, so unfortunately it’s difficult to know if you can give the renovations at Boone Pickens Stadium credit for every single dollar of that added revenue, but you could certainly make the argument.

Winning definitely helps and OSU has been pretty good recently. Maybe Gundy could’ve used Lewis Field and still landed Brandon Weeden and Justin Blackmon and won a Fiesta Bowl? Maybe Mason Rudolph and James Washington still would’ve come here and made the Sugar Bowl?

It’s possible, but certainly would’ve been much more difficult without the stadium upgrades and even if they were winning at that level, the new stadium created additional seating along with suites and a club level that allowed for larger revenue.

If you take the $10.4M of football revenue in 2003 and say that OSU would’ve made that each year for the next 16 years if it weren’t for Boone’s donation (it probably wouldn’t have been that stagnant, but let’s use that number for the sake of argument), the total would have been $167M. The total revenue OSU actually did make was $321M — a difference of $156M.

Though it’s well documented that Boone Pickens’ donations went far beyond the initial $165 million-dollar donation, it may have theoretically paid off based on these numbers. The 2018 football season is a part of the 2019 financial report, which has yet to be publicly posted and would’ve likely tipped OSU over that $165 million difference. This is a rough, fairly simplistic way of looking at this, but it certainly gets at the bigger point.

3. How does it impact other giving?

Every big Oklahoma State donor has their own special place at the university, but it certainly seems as though T. Boone Pickens sparked a trend. There’s not much data before his donations to really know what giving trends were at OSU prior, but following his $165 million donation there were only two years — in 2016 and 2017 — that donations were a lesser amount than any year from 2003-2005. And since Boone’s donation they’ve constructed a new indoor football practice facility, new soccer and tennis facilities, and a have plans for an indoor track and new wrestling facility all thanks to generous donors who followed up Boone’s gifts with that of their own.

We all know that the football facility upgrades changed the game for Oklahoma State football and their ability to compete in recruiting and other areas, but it also clearly became a massive revenue generator for the school and athletic department as a whole.