As Iowa braces for revenue sharing, Carver-Hawkeye Arena renovation remains among priorities

IOWA CITY — Once colleges can begin directly sharing revenue with athletes in 2025-26, Beth Goetz made no qualms about how Iowa is “going to fully participate.”

“We’re prepared to do that, and we’re excited about rolling that out, assuming there’s final approval (in the House vs. NCAA settlement),” said Goetz, Iowa’s athletics director, Tuesday after the university’s monthly Presidential Committee on Athletics meeting.

Each school’s cap for athlete compensation — and what Iowa therefore intends to pay — is expected to be roughly $20.5 million in 2025-26 (although that figure can fluctuate based on a formula).

Goetz mentioned to the PCA “both constraining some of our current expenses and looking for new ways to generate revenue.” Athletics departments may be more cautious about facility projects, too.

“You’re going to see, I think, here at Iowa and across the country that people will be more thoughtful about projects that aren’t necessities in the moment and that don’t help you drive revenue,” Goetz said after the meeting.

Those budget constraints have not deterred Iowa’s AD, however, from pursuing significant renovations of Carver-Hawkeye Arena — a project that remains in “feasibility mode” at this point.

“To be candid, we wish this wasn’t the moment in time that we needed to focus on that project as well,” Goetz told The Gazette in a Carver-Hawkeye Arena conference room. “But this building is a revenue-generator, and it’s also 42 years old.”

Goetz has eyed a potential major Carver-Hawkeye Arena renovation for a while. The 14,998-seat arena was built in 1983 and remains the competitive home of Iowa’s basketball and wrestling programs.

The Carver-Hawkeye Arena renovation “will get done to the extent that we have the ability to fund it,” Goetz said, as she has “continued conversations” with some donors.

“At this moment in time, I think the prudent, responsible thing to do from a fiscal standpoint is to ensure that we have a solid financial plan,” Goetz said. “So my approach to this project is that we will complete what is philanthropically possible.”

Goetz, while primarily focused on funding from donors, did not entirely rule out “other business revenue streams” to defray renovation costs.

“But our intent is certainly not to take on additional debt to do the project,” Goetz said.

Iowa already reported paying $19.9 million in “athletic facilities debt service, leases and rental fee” from past projects in its 2023-24 NCAA financial filing, which The Gazette obtained via an open records request. (That figure includes a $1.5 million payment on a loan from the general university fund.)

Iowa remains tight-lipped on some details of revenue sharing plan

The anticipated $20.5 million cap poses the question of how to split up the finite pool of funding among football, basketball and any other sports on campus.

Texas Tech’s athletics director Kirby Hocutt told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in December the Red Raiders will allocate about 74 percent of funds to football players and 17 to 18 percent to men’s basketball.

Goetz is not as comfortable disclosing Iowa’s sport-by-sport breakdown, however.

“I know some schools have decided that they want to be able to share that publicly,” Goetz said. “That’s not something that we’re going to do. We feel really comfortable about where we’re at. We’re going to be competitive, but I don’t think we are at a point where we want to share that with our peers.”

Within each sport, Goetz does not anticipate there being a “one-size-fits-all” approach to how much each player on a particular team will earn in the revenue-sharing era.

“You’re always going to have to weigh, ‘How does this particular team play?’” Goetz said. “Maybe where you have gaps on your team that you might be recruiting to and where the market — meaning the talent level — is maybe more sparse in a certain position than others.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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