Louisiana legislators to consider college athletics subsidies

quote:

---

BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana Illuminator) - The Louisiana Legislature is considering several proposals that would create tax breaks and new revenue streams for college athletes and their sports programs.

If passed in their current state, the proposals would exempt college athletes from income taxes on their name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and would create a new fund to give tax dollars to NCAA Division I athletics programs like LSU’s.

But critics say the Republican-backed proposals are doing something antithetical to their party’s free-market philosophy. They also argue the bills could further widen the divide — cultural and fiscal — between academics and athletics.

The change could also come at the expense of priority services the state provides, such as early childhood education.

House Bill 639 by Rep. Neil Riser, R-Columbia, would increase the tax on sports gambling from 15% to 32.5%, aligning it with the tax on video poker machine wagers. Increasing the tax rate on sports gambling has support from both conservative and progressive corners, both of whom want to use the revenue to offset the “social ills” of gambling.

But Riser’s bill goes further, altering the revenue split and putting 25% into a fund that would benefit student-athletes at public schools that compete at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision levels. That includes UL Lafayette, UL Monroe, Louisiana Tech, LSU, Grambling, McNeese, Nicholls, Northwestern, Southeastern and Southern.

The University of New Orleans, which does not have a football program, would be left in the cold.

“The need is so high,” Riser said in an interview with the Louisiana Illuminator and Tiger Rag. “When you start talking about the SEC, talking about any level of athletics right now, it’s changed so dramatically.”

“Even like ULM … just to be competitive [in recruiting], it takes facilities, when you’re dealing with [athletes] they require you to have all those things,” Riser said.

A frequent adage about LSU athletics is that it doesn’t get any state funding, which isn’t strictly true. The department notably received $1 million in cash from the state in 2023 to plan for improving or replacing the Pete Marravich Assembly Center and occasionally receives small-dollar amounts for various state-funded projects.

But Riser’s fund could change that. The state currently brings in approximately $54 million annually in sports gambling revenue. If his bill passes, the state’s take would increase to approximately $116 million, with about $30 million dedicated to college athletics.

That’s a huge amount of money in the context of college athletics in Louisiana. Only LSU has a budget larger than that, with most other FBS and FCS schools in Louisiana bringing in only half or a third as much.

---

quote:

---

Two pending bills would exempt athletes’ NIL compensation from state income tax.

The most notable proposal is House Bill 166 by Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, which would exempt the entirety of athletes’ NIL income from the state taxes. McMakin, an LSU alum whose father played baseball for the Tigers in the 1970s, said he proposed the legislation because LSU is competing for athletes against states like Texas that don’t have a state income tax.

---