In anticipation of revenue sharing, UK altering governance structure for athletics
In anticipation of the advent of revenue sharing between colleges and their athletes expected to begin this summer, the University of Kentucky is changing the way its athletics department is governed.
The athletics committee of the UK Board of Trustees voted Thursday to approve a plan for the formation of a new affiliated corporation called Champions Blue that will include UK Athletics. The setup is similar to the one UK created for the management of community hospitals in Ashland and Morehead and falls under the same holding company, Beyond Blue, that encompasses the community hospitals. The full Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote on the plan at its Friday meeting.
“This gives us an opportunity to have an entity create benefits, which allows us to be more thoughtful in our revenue streams, create maybe some public-private partnerships and will benefit from internal and outside experts, including some people from pro sports,” UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart said. “Some transparency and accountability that helps us through this new world and makes it steadfast in our commitment to continue to graduate young people.”
The new structure will allow the athletics department to operate separately from some current university policies like the structure of benefits packages for employees, but the athletics department would remain a public entity subject to the same state and federal regulations as the university.
Champions Blue will have its own governing board, which will still be overseen by the university Board of Trustees. UK anticipates part of that board including representatives from professional sports best equipped to advise the athletics department on the changing landscape of college sports.
“We can bring some people that are maybe in other realms of sport, maybe pro sport, or other realms of sport, that faced some of these revenue pressures,” UK executive vice president for finance and administration Eric Monday said. “I think that that’s one of the key components.
“Another one is policy differentiation from the university. So right now, when you think about compensation and benefits, the university has a one size fits all strategy that may not be necessary, or we may need to think about different levels of benefit differentiation for an athletics department. Maybe there’s benefits that we have to offer to our employees that are different than the other 20,000 employees that we have at the university.”
The new board will be one of the earliest noticeable differences in the structure for fans.
UK plans to unveil the board, along with the Champions Blue budget, at its June Board of Trustees meeting. In addition to professional sports representatives, that board will include UK administrators and current business professionals already working with the department. The Champions Blue board will be chaired by the university president.
“I want people connected to the University of Kentucky,” Barnhart said. “So we’ve got plenty of people in the pro sports world that have got connections. This is not something where they’re spending every day working at it.
“We’re asking them to spend some time with us and dedicate some effort to this, for sure, but this is not their full-time job. It’s somebody that can bring expertise to what we do a little bit different from what we currently have on our athletics committee, just a different makeup.”
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Where does the House settlement stand?
If the House settlement is approved this spring by a federal judge in California as expected — the judge delayed final approval this week as she asked the parties to possibly ease some of the roster restrictions included in the settlement — UK anticipates needing to account for an additional $50 million in the athletics budget.
That number includes $20.5 million of revenue the school can distribute to athletes, the cost of additional scholarships in multiple sports and the impact of inflation increasing costs on travel, food and other expenses.
Since Beyond Blue has more flexibility in making financial commitments for the medical wing of the company, UK anticipates the new structure will allow the athletics department to better pivot in search of new revenue streams.
“We’ve had a lot of thoughts of things we wanted to do to produce new revenue, and some of those we’re just not capable of doing in our current structure,” Barnhart said. “... We talked about public-private partnerships. We’ve got some thoughts, and you’ve heard other (schools) talk about business districts and things like that. And those are conversations that are all on the table but really difficult to perform in our current structure. This gives us more flexibility to do that.”
Finding ways to use the campus space around UK’s athletic arenas and stadiums will almost certainly be part of the new revenue streams. The university has already used public-private partnerships to transform student housing on campus and could use similar setups for athletic facilities in the future. In a news release announcing the creation of Champions Blue, UK also mentioned expanded premium seating and fan experiences at Kroger Field as a possible new revenue source.
Will athletics continue to financially assist academics?
Financial cuts will be needed to account for the new expenses from the House settlement, but Barnhart said the athletics department, which is currently financially self sufficient, wants to continue to support the academic side of the university as it does now by helping to fund some academic scholarships and the construction of the Don Jacob Science Building on campus.
However, neither Barnhart nor Monday was ready to outline specific changes coming to the budget that will be unveiled in June.
“The president has challenged Mitch and me and our teams to look at this over multiple years, and so we will be discussing and presenting in June a multi-year budget where everything is going to be on the table for conversation,” Monday said. “Athletics is going to continue to honor their commitments, but at the same time, the institution is going to honor the commitment to the athletics department and look at ways in which we can support athletes, we can help support facility projects, we can help look at land that we have adjacent to athletic facilities and move quickly on development projects that could generate additional revenues in future fiscal years.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 3:27 PM.