Sponsored by Matrix Fitness
With modern-day collegiate athletics moving in myriad directions at a heart-pounding pace, Athletic Business determined it was high time to retake this industry segment’s pulse. AB surveyed collegiate athletic departments at all levels of competition earlier this year to gauge current sports sponsorship and program support. Here’s a summary of what we found:
Our 2025 sample includes departments representing members of the NCAA (78.1%), NAIA (12.5) and NJCAA (9.4). A plurality of respondents — nearly 39% — hold a “very positive” opinion of their given governing body, followed closely by “somewhat positive” opinions (35.5). Roughly a quarter of the pool held either “neutral” (22.5) or “somewhat negative” (3.2) positions. For the second-straight survey, none reported a “very negative” take on their governing body. Positive opinions (very and somewhat) have bounced back to a combined 74.5% this year from 72% in 2021, but they still trail the mark of 79% in 2020, when 49% of respondents were “very positive.”
The 2025 field exhibits a wide range of student-athlete populations — from 50 to 6,002 — with a median of 435 student-athletes. Basketball again reigns supreme, with men’s basketball sponsored by 96.9% of responding athletic departments, and women’s basketball by 90.6%, but the disparity between the two percentages has never been greater. On the men’s side, baseball comes in second (78.1), followed by golf (75) and cross country (71.9). For women, basketball is followed by soccer and volleyball (both at 87.5), as well as softball (84.4) and cross country (75). Football is played at 59.4% of this year’s responding schools — the highest percentage among AB’s three surveys to date.
In terms of like-sports sponsorship in 2025, men outpace women only in basketball (see above), golf (75-65.6), ice hockey (21.9-9.4) and wrestling (31.3-15.6). Women hold the sponsorship upper hand in volleyball (87.5-15.6), swimming and diving (53.13-28.1), rowing (25-6.25), soccer (87.5-62.5), tennis (65.6-53.1), gymnastics (18.8-9.4), water polo (9.4-0), track and field (71.9-62.5) and cross country (75-71.9).
More than 44% of 2025 survey respondents report adding sports within the past three years, up 11.9 percentage points from our 2021 sample and 7.4 from 2020. Like our 2021 sample, changes in student-athlete interest was the top reason for changes in sports sponsorship among this year’s field, but for only 27.8% compared to 35.5%. Only in 2020 did budget (40%) top our provided list of reasons for adding or eliminating programs. Moreover, as in 2021, more respondents indicate plans to add sports in the coming three years than those foreseeing sports elimination, but by a narrower margin of 11.1 percentage points this time compared to 35 percentage points four years ago.
Among existing revenue-generating sports, 47.6% of this year’s sample have seen student attendance increase over the past five years.
Student-athlete transfer rules weigh heaviest on the minds of 2025 respondents in terms of program-related concerns — more than coach salary inflation, gender equity and conference realignment. Transgender inclusion ranked last on our list of six issues facing college administrators today.
In terms of athlete-related issues, student-athlete mental health and student-athlete academic support garner the lion’s share of concern, followed very closely by student-athlete injury prevention and care. That may explain why 87.5% of respondents offer mental health services to their student-athletes, 93.8% provide them with support services (the highest percentage by 20 points in any AB survey) and fully half have dedicated student-athlete academic facilities on their campuses. Somewhat surprisingly, student-athlete compensation ranks a fairly distant fourth, topping only student-athlete drug use on our list of athlete-related issues.
For the first time in our college athletics survey, as many respondents say they consider their facilities superior to those of peer institutions as say theirs are subpar. That’s not stopping 86.7% of 2025 respondents from reporting plans to build or renovate athletics facilities within the next three years — the highest-ever mark by a full 16 percentage points.
This year’s sample represents far greater budget diversity than AB’s previous two college athletics surveys. Whereas at least half of respondents to the 2020 and 2021 surveys represented athletic departments with annual budgets of less than $5 million, 71% of this year’s respondents report budgets exceeding $5 million, and nearly a quarter boast budgets of $100 million or more.
Draw from these numbers what you will, but clearly the business of college sports is only going to become bigger and bolder moving forward.
How Matrix Keeps Pace with the Evolution of College Strength Training
Sponsored by Matrix Fitness
As the collegiate strength training space continues to evolve, equipment manufacturers must meet the demands of coaches, athletes and trainers. Athletic Business caught up with Gus Rodriguez, west regional athletics manager at Matrix Fitness, to find out how his company is keeping pace in today’s competitive strength equipment industry.
Athletic Business: How does Matrix stay up to speed on the changes in collegiate athletics as they pertain to strength and fitness training?
Gus Rodriguez is west regional athletics manager at Matrix Fitness
AB: Are there changes in the collegiate athletics space that you’ve observed in the past couple of years?
GR: There are definitely some trends we’ve been seeing for several years. “How can we do more with less space?” Customers want more options and more storage. You can never have enough workspace, so the ability to create more functionality in the racks is key. Branding and full-blown customization has been big. Creating more school pride on the units is huge. Also, doing very unique customization on racks has increased tremendously. You see it with the bridges and features that are added to the bridges. We’ve also seen a resurgence in plate-loaded. They keep proper alignment while providing ability to train to failure.
AB: Can you give us some insight on the nature of a discussion with a strength trainer or coach who comes to you looking to outfit a new fitness facility for their program?
GR: Nobody knows a program better than the coach. Coaches know what they want and need. Our job is to take their wants and needs and help create a vision. The ability to maximize a program’s square footage in the room and provide equipment that meets the program’s needs via space utilization, functionality, safety and appearance is the key. We take pride in being part of that process. We have one of the most experienced layout support teams in the industry to assist in 3D and flythrough layouts, which allows us to make sure all the equipment fits and traffic in the room flows efficiently. We have a great team at Matrix that helps with equipment configurations, so we’re able to answer questions like, “Can we have storage here? Can we add land mines here? Can we add this here?” Helping bring a vision to reality is what we do best.
AB: A lot of these team spaces are really decked out in team colors and messaging. How important is that branding element for your clients?
GR: Highly important. Social media has really driven the branding element, and we love it! There’s so much that we can do with our equipment when it comes to creating custom branding and colors. Signs, laser cuts, custom shrouds — you name it. Incredible how the aura of a room can change just by the colors and branding.
AB: Anything new Matrix is working on right now that pertains to the athletics space?
GR: There is always something new at Matrix. The big buzz in the industry is our new Magnum plate-loaded line. We had the privilege of showcasing this line at the HFA show this past year. Incredible hit! Our product team did a tremendous job in redefining the plate-loaded line. Stay on the lookout for these new pieces. We do also have some other items coming soon, but we’ll need to sit quiet on those for now.
