HOUSTON, Texas (April 7, 2025) – The Rice University Athletic Department produced advertising value of $562 million over the past three years. This branding and advertising impact is a result of athletic events via broadcast television, streaming and social media per a recently completed study by Collegiate Consulting.
Collegiate Consulting gathered information from 2021 to 2024 via a mix of public and confidential data from Rice. The firm then created projections to substitute unidentified information to determine the total average annual economic impact of the Rice intercollegiate athletic program at $285 million annually and a three-year valuation of $854 million.
This study allows Rice to contextualize the value brought to the university’s athletics by branding and visibility, game-days, and the event valuation for Houston, and through personnel, student-athletes, and graduate’s economic impact.
The study by Collegiate Consulting included diving into direct spending in Rice’s athletic department, with the compounded economic impact from indirect and induced spending.
Collegiate Consulting was able to determine over the past three years; the game day and event economic impact of Rice athletic events, camps and non-athletic events held in athletic venues is $115.72 million, the economic impact of athletic staff and student athletes is $97.6 million, a direct revenue impact of $63.68 million.
The local and national profile of Rice Athletics has grown significantly in recent years due to media exposure, national broadcasts, and streaming advertising. Just a few examples include:
• Four nationally televised football games in 2022 and 2023, garnering a total viewership of almost ten million. Viewership peaked during the Rice/Texas game where just over three million viewers tuned in.
• Rice University had 155 streamed games across seven sports in 2023 on ESPN+ or ESPNU.
• Football had 13 events streamed on ESPN+ and ESPN3 with 1.15 million viewers.
• Baseball had 49 streamed games on ESPN+ with 322,449 viewers.
• Men’s basketball had 27 streamed games on ESPN+ and ESPNU with 238,501 viewers.
• Women’s basketball had 28 games streamed on ESPN+ with 96,235 viewers.
• Volleyball had 25 streamed games on ESPN+ with 70,001 viewers.
The online status of Rice Athletics has also shown significant growth in recent years due to social media. This is measured by advertising value equivalency (AVE), a measure of publicity used to determine the equivalent of a return on investment. Social media data includes:
• Twitter impressions at 31.3 million across seven platforms with an AVE of $212,733
• Facebook at 5.7 million impressions with a value equivalency of $216,970
• Engagement on Instagram is at five million with an AVE of $189,787
Collegiate Consulting has conducted similar revenue and economic studies for several universities including University of Toledo and Valparaiso University over the past 36 months.