Government-imposed restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States continue to tighten, altering daily life and deepening the economic impact of the virus in Alabama and elsewhere.

For individuals, families and business struggling to make ends meet, the financial implications of the crisis on the Southeastern Conference and the University of Alabama’s athletics are likely an afterthought.

“The financial impact, candidly, has not been at the forefront of our conversations,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged during a media conference call Wednesday. "We’ve made decisions based on the health and the well-being of people around our programs. There certainly are revenue implications. We have staff working through those.

“I’m certain every conference is working to assess the financial impact, and I’m not going to make predictions other than we’ve seen alterations in the NCAA tournament that, no doubt, will have a financial impact.”

The loss of revenue from the cancelled NCAA men’s basketball tournament will have the most significant effect on Alabama’s athletics department, which has only started to calculate the financial ramifications of remaining winter and spring sports being called off.

“We think the NCAA tournament part will be a couple of million dollars," Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne said Thursday. “That’s our best estimate at this point.”

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The NCAA’s revenue from March Madness trickles down to schools such as Alabama through conference payouts, and was part of the $44.6 million distributed by the SEC to each school for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

The lack of an NCAA tournament this spring is expected to reduce distributions to conferences, although USA Today reported this week the NCAA has business-interruption insurance that could lessen the blow.

Alabama reported $2,163,759 in NCAA distributions to men’s basketball on its 2019 fiscal year report.

Beyond funding from the NCAA tournament, determining how Alabama’s bottom line will shake out becomes a more granular exercise.

“I don’t have any data beyond from what we think from an NCAA standpoint will be the impact,” Byrne said. "Everything else is too early to understand.”

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The Tide’s spring sports missed out on limited revenue but could avoid some expenses that contributed to the programs’ annual financial losses.

Softball played 22 games before seeing its final 32 games canceled. The halt likely diminished ticket revenue, which totaled $224,903 in the prior fiscal year -- but also could result in the department recouping travel and game day-related expenses. Those totaled $444,664 and $161,278 in the prior fiscal year, respectively.

The same could be true for baseball, which won 16 of its first 17 games before seeing the remainder of its 56-game slate wiped out. Baseball made $367,255 in ticket sales in the last fiscal year but incurred $329,842 in travel expenses and another $596,213 in game-day costs.

“That’s one of the things we’ve tried to evaluate: expenses that we’d normally have in the spring with our spring sports and recruiting and everything else that goes on,” Byrne explained Thursday. "What type of savings will be there, will we be able to have from that? And we don’t know what that would be yet but we’re working on that.”

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The timing of the virus outbreak left Alabama’s only two sports that make a profit, football and basketball, relatively unscathed.

The SEC did, however, prohibit schools from holding spring football games -- including the one Alabama had scheduled for April 18.

But “A-Day” being a free event for fans -- as well as a reduced capacity because of construction in Bryant-Denny Stadium -- mitigated any potential financial loss.

“That would be minimal," Byrne said. “That’s obviously something we’ve had for our fans throughout the state and throughout the country to be a part of without any costs associated for them.”

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