KU Athletics Approves 2025 Budget, $300M Stadium Project Remains On Time

Posted November 18, 2024

The Kansas Athletics board of directors approved the budget for the fiscal year 2025, with expenses short by around $16 million, but reiterated that the stadium project remains on schedule.

The board approved the budget on Friday. The anticipated revenues for the year were predicted to be around $122 million. However, it is short of expenses by $16 million. The $16 million will be covered with a line of credit established during the pandemic, according to a Friday release.

Kansas Athletics CFO, Pat Kaufman, said the department broke even in the fiscal year 2024 and had a $438,000 surplus on the June 2023 budget. That budget was approximately $127 million.

With a lower budget for the upcoming year, higher prices also loom overhead. Expenses for football staffing, maintenance and temporarily relocating to a new stadium to cover bussing and rental costs are stretching the budget further than before.

Despite this, Kansas Athletics Director Travis Goff the stadium project remains on time and on budget for its opening home game against Fresno State on Aug. 23. Some components of the new stadium, such as the new conference center, were questioned if they would be complete in time for the opening.

“If there were to be any sense of what we had to prioritize in completion for August of ’25, yes, we would prioritize getting everything ready for the football game first, conference center second,” deputy athletics director for administration Sean Lester said in the release.

The $300 million Gateway District project, anticipates the first phase of the project to be complete by August. The project hit its most recent milestone in September when over 100 Kansas Football members visited the site to sign the final steel beam.