Georgia Tech’s continued investment in athletics, and specifically football, was highlighted Tuesday during the Georgia Tech Athletic Association board of trustees meeting.
Tech’s balanced budget for the fiscal year of 2025 will be $137.8 million, an increase of nearly $10 million from the fiscal year 2024, when the budget was $127.9 million. Specifics of the budget, approved via vote by the board Monday, were not released.
The new budget marks a 45% increase in athletics budget for Tech from the 2022 fiscal year ($94.9 million). Tech athletic director J Batt inherited an athletics budget of $105.2 million for the fiscal year of 2023.
Tech also made a concerted effort to place more funds toward the football program, which will see more than a 30% increase in its specific budget.
“That’s a combined effort from donors, corporate partners, the institute continuing to support us and being aligned,” Batt told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. “Just continuing to innovate and find different ways to drive revenue and to grow our budget to the point where we’re competitive nationally in that space is important.”
Batt spoke to the board Monday about the Yellow Jackets’ athletic season coming to an end with the baseball team’s loss to Georgia in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday. He highlighted that program’s return to the season, praised national champion golfer Hiroshi Tai and the men’s golf team and lauded Tech’s tennis programs qualifying for their respective NCAA tournaments.
Approaching his two-year anniversary at Tech in October, Batt also made note of the Jackets’ continued academic success, which continues to trend upward. Tech’s football’s TV schedule, which already includes two games on ESPN and another on ABC, was a point of emphasis as well.
“We’re certainly not at the destination for the level of programmatic excellence that we want to be at year in, year out, but I felt like there was a lot of progress made,” Batt told the board. “So really proud of all our teams and student-athletes.”
