(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin name, image and likeness bill that would send $15 million annually for athletic facility debt to the University of Wisconsin system could soon reach the Senate floor after passing the Assembly.
But, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association is warning lawmakers and the public that a public records stipulation that could have a sweeping unintended impact that goes well beyond NIL records.
The bill would exempt records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program.”
“As drafted, it looks to create a sweeping exemption for any financial record connected to a public university’s athletic program,” WNA Executive Director Beth Bennett wrote in testimony. “Public universities are taxpayer-supported institutions. Athletic departments generate and spend millions of dollars in public and quasi-public funds. Decisions about how revenue is raised, allocated, and spent directly affect students, taxpayers, and the broader public.”
UW-Madison Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Nancy Lynch told a Senate committee this week that the intention is to codify what the university is currently doing by denying NIL records by citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, saying the goal is to “protect our ability to remain competitive by not releasing documents that would provide information about the strategy, the approach and how we’re managing things on an NIL basis.”
Amending the bill would mean the Assembly would need to concur with any changes. The Assembly has completed its session but Gov. Tony Evers has called lawmakers back for a special session on redistricting.
UW-Madison Athletics Director Chris McIntosh said that the $14.6 million annually to the athletic department for facilities debt is essentially for the athletic department to remain competitive and supporting 23 sports and 600-plus athletes.
UW-Madison athletics operated with a $4.3 million surplus in its most recent annual NCAA financial report released earlier this year covering the financial year that ended in June 2025.
The football program accounted for 80% of the program’s revenue, equaling $113.6 million last fiscal year, according to the NCAA report, which showed the football program brought in $72 million in excess during the year.
“In the event that this legislation is not passed, we will be forced to reconcile our revenues with our liabilities, like we always have,” McIntosh told the Senate committee. “And that will come through a series of painful reductions, further emphasis on increasing our revenues.
“And, what I fear is, that through those reductions in support of our sport programs, all of our sport programs, all 23 of our sport programs, we’ll be left in a situation in which it will be difficult to say the least, for us to be competitive in the sports that generate in excess of 80% of the revenues. And it will also be difficult to be competitive.”
Athletic department officials and bill sponsors cited a 2022 marketing report from Philadelphia-based Consult Solutions that claimed each UW-Madison football game brings $19 million of economic impact to Dane County.
Those types of hired marketing reports, however, are consistently rejected by sports economists who point out the flaws in the math used and how they do not factor in items such as diverted spending, crowding out effects and the costs related to large events and facilities.
Sports teams and athletic programs then use those marketing reports to justify public spending, the UW-Madison athletics officials are doing with AB 1034, which does not have a fiscal estimate attached yet.
