Ole Miss brings in record-setting revenue

OXFORD – Ole Miss' athletics department has achieved record-high revenue totals over the last two years largely thanks to big spikes in ticket sales and rights/licensing fees, an open-records request from USA Today showed.

Ole Miss brought in nearly $17.3 million in ticket sales last year. It netted roughly $31.5 via licensing fees.

Both are record highs for the school by a wide margin.

For comparison, when both head football coach Hugh Freeze and athletics director Ross Bjork arrived in Oxford in 2012, ticket sales brought in nearly $4 million less and profits from licensing was roughly $24 million.

It's a major jump from nearly 10 years ago, when Ole Miss reported ticket sales profits of $8.9 million and around $10 million off licensing.

Ole Miss saw 430,829 fans attend home football games and sold out 100 percent of its season tickets last year, which has only happened five times in school history, Ole Miss' athletic director of marketing and communications Michael Thompson told The Clarion-Ledger at the end of the season.

In all, Ole Miss brought in $75,849,000 in revenue in 2014. Again, an all-time high in school history and up nearly $2 million from its 2013 total despite bringing in nearly $2 million less in contributions.

Just two years ago, Ole Miss totaled $51.8 million in revenue.

Ole Miss' revenue numbers ranked 12th in the Southeastern Conference and 38th in the country in in 2014, according to the report.

The increased revenue has also come with and allowed for record-setting expenditure, up nearly $3 million dollars from last year at $73.2 million.

The most notably jump in expenses was on coaching salaries. Ole Miss spent nearly $26.5 million, the report showed, on salaries in 2014.

It's more than a $7 million increase from 2011 and a $16 million increase from 9 years ago.

Last December, Hugh Freeze agreed to a new four-year contract worth $4.3 million a year. It also came with an increase of "at least" 25 percent for the assistant football coaches' salary pool.

This year, Ole Miss has already given raises and extensions to men's basketball coach Andy Kennedy, women's basketball coach Matt Insell and Bjork, himself.