Georgia Tech Athletics Finances

How to read this page

Georgia Tech’s athletic department is run by the Georgia Tech Athletic Association (GTAA), a nonprofit that publishes audited financial statements every year, usually in the fall. Its fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30, so FY2025 covers the 2024 football season.

Three kinds of numbers show up in coverage of Tech’s finances, and they don’t match each other. The tables below use the audited statements unless they say otherwise. Budgets and department press releases appear separately, under What Tech reports, and Why the numbers don’t match explains the differences. All figures are in millions of dollars and rounded to one decimal place. The source documents have the exact amounts.

Revenue and expenses over time

Fiscal years ending June 30. FY2020 is missing because its audited statements haven’t been located. Pledged gifts count as revenue in the year they’re made, which is most of the jump in FY2025.

Operating results by year

Operating result is revenue minus expenses before interest, investment gains and capital gifts. Change in net position includes all of those, so it is the closest thing to a bottom line. Notes & bonds owed is the balance on June 30 and doesn’t include lines of credit or other contract obligations.

Year notes

• FY2025: Contributions more than doubled, which the statements attribute to the Full Steam Ahead campaign; pledges count as revenue when they are made, not when the cash arrives.
• FY2024: Notes and bonds rose about $32 million. The Series 2024 bonds ($34.1 million outstanding a year later) are the newest series on the books.
• FY2023: Salaries and benefits peaked in the year Tech fired football coach Geoff Collins and men’s basketball coach Josh Pastner. Later statements note that this category includes severance for departed head coaches.
• FY2022: Restated in the FY2023 statements: $2.8 million in sponsorship-agreement expenses were moved into FY2022. Debt figure from the FY2022 statements.
• FY2021: COVID season with limited attendance. A $43.3 million gain in the fair value of investments drove the positive change in net position.
• FY2020: The FY2020 audited statements haven’t been located online yet. FY2021 figures come from the comparative column of the FY2022 statements.
• FY2019: Paul Johnson’s final season. Football ticket revenue fell about $3.5 million from FY2018.

Where the money comes from

Event-related covers premium seat licenses, sponsorships and game guarantees. Other includes student athletic fees and institutional support from Georgia Tech. Football tickets is part of total ticket sales.

Where the money goes

Program & facilities includes scholarships, travel, recruiting, game-day operations and maintenance. The FY2025 jump in general & administrative expense is partly due to reclassification, so FY2025 categories may not compare cleanly with earlier years. See Notes on the source documents.

The debt

Tech owed $296.0M in long-term obligations on June 30, 2025. That includes $287.6 million in notes and bonds, a $4.0 million line of credit, $2.9 million in contract agreements, a $1.4 million software subscription liability and $43,000 in leases. Most of it is bond debt from stadium and facilities projects that has been refinanced several times.

Bonds and notes outstanding

Rates are effective borrowing rates as reported in Note 10 of the FY2025 statements.

Scheduled payments

Bonds and notes outstanding on June 30, 2025 only. Paying them off will cost $144.9M in interest on top of the principal. The 2026 stadium bonds below are not included.

New borrowing since the last audit

1. May 2026 Develop Fulton (the Development Authority of Fulton County) approved a bond inducement resolution for up to $70 million to renovate Bobby Dodd Stadium: a new video board and press areas, expanded premium seating, food service and ADA improvements. The work is scheduled to finish in late summer 2027. Source
2. June 2026 Fitch rated about $65 million in Series 2026A/B revenue bonds A+ with a stable outlook and affirmed Tech’s existing bonds at A+. Source
3. June 17, 2026 The bonds sold: $48.09 million in Series 2026A (single maturity Aug. 2037) and $16.6 million in taxable Series 2026B (serial maturities 2027–2039), both dated July 1, 2026. That date falls in fiscal 2027, so this debt should first appear in the FY2027 audited statements. Source

What Tech reports

These numbers come from athletic department budgets and press releases, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They are not audited and use a different basis from the tables above, so don’t subtract one from the other.

Approved budgets

Why the numbers don’t match

For FY2025, Georgia Tech’s figures put revenue at about $156 million, the audited statements show $187.1M in operating revenue, and Fitch’s June 2026 rating report cited more than $205 million in total revenue. All three can be correct at the same time:

• The audited statements follow government accounting rules (GASB). A multiyear pledge counts as revenue when it’s made, so a big campaign year such as FY2025’s Full Steam Ahead push raises revenue well before the cash comes in.
• Department-reported revenue is what the athletic department announces. Georgia Tech hasn’t published how it reconciles with the audit.
• Rating-agency totals usually include items the statements list below the operating line, such as investment income and capital gifts. Fitch’s published summary doesn’t break its figure down.

Spending works the same way. Budgets are plans, and audited expenses include depreciation, a non-cash charge of about $13 million a year that no budget lists as spending.

Notes on the source documents

The audited statements aren’t perfectly consistent with themselves. Where the narrative section disagrees with the audited statements or notes, this tracker uses the statements and notes. These are the conflicts found so far:

• The FY2025 statements give FY2024 contributions as $34.6 million in the management discussion (MD&A) text but $36.3 million in the financial statements. The tracker uses the statement figure. The same sentence prints FY2025 contributions as “$78,598,598,932.”
• The FY2025 MD&A says Series 2012B payments run “through 2029.” Note 10 gives a final maturity of October 2035, and the payment schedule follows Note 10.
• The FY2025 MD&A labels the $32.1 million Series 2019 piece as taxable and the $131.6 million piece as tax-exempt. Note 10 says the reverse: 2019A ($32.1 million) is tax-exempt and 2019B ($126.6 million outstanding) is taxable.
• The FY2025 MD&A attributes the jump in general and administrative expense ($20.8 million to $49.2 million) “primarily” to reclassifications “mentioned in Note 1,” but Note 1 describes no reclassification. Expense categories may not compare cleanly between FY2024 and FY2025.
• The FY2023 financial highlights report an operating loss of $15,552,270, and the MD&A gives ending net position as $71,737,667. The audited statements show $15,874,393 and $71,415,544. The tracker uses the statements.
• The FY2023 statements restated FY2022, lowering net position by $2,777,189 for sponsorship-agreement expenses that belonged in FY2022. The tracker uses the restated FY2022 figures.
• The FY2019 MD&A gives total long-term debt as $197.7 million, which does not match the $228.4 million in notes and bonds shown in the notes. The tracker uses the notes.

Sources

• GTAA audited financial statements, FY2025 (with FY2024 comparatives)
• GTAA audited financial statements, FY2023 (with restated FY2022)
• GTAA audited financial statements, FY2022 (with FY2021 comparatives)
• GTAA audited financial statements, FY2019 (with FY2018 comparatives)
• AJC: Georgia Tech approves athletic budget for 2026 fiscal year (June 2025)
• AJC: Georgia Tech athletics reports $175 million in revenue for 2026 fiscal year (July 2026)
• AJC: How Georgia Tech hustles to meet college athletics’ rising costs (Aug. 2026)
• AJC: Georgia Tech gets approval for up to $70M in financing for stadium upgrades (May 2026)
• The Bond Buyer: negotiated sales, June 18, 2026
• Traders Union: Georgia Tech Athletic Association revenue bonds rated A+ by Fitch (June 2026)

Change log

• Nov. 5, 2026: Tracker launched with audited results for FY2018–FY2019 and FY2021–FY2025, bond detail as of June 30, 2025, and the 2026 stadium bonds.

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