How much are California’s public universities paying athletes? CalMatters is suing to find out

CalMatters filed a lawsuit against UCLA Monday after nearly a year of attempts to obtain information about how the university pays its student athletes.

Last fall, CalMatters submitted records requests to 16 University of California and California State University campuses, seeking information about payments to their Division I athletes, but many schools provided little or no information in response. The lawsuit states that taxpayers are entitled to know the names of players who have received money and the teams they play on.

“When public institutions distribute public resources, the public is entitled to know who receives those resources, in what amounts, and on what terms,” the lawsuit says. Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the UC system, said the UC will “respond appropriately in court” and that it takes the “California Public Records Act and student privacy obligations seriously.” 

These direct payments to athletes began last summer when a legal settlement made it possible for the first time. 

The universities pay student athletes for the right to use their name, image and likeness — NIL — in promotional materials. The payments also help recruit top athletes or dissuade them from seeking better pay elsewhere. 

UCLA and UC Berkeley, which have the most competitive and most lucrative athletics programs among the state’s public universities, initially rejected CalMatters’ records requests. They argued that sharing information about their payments to students would put their players at a competitive disadvantage or violate students’ right to privacy in education. 

After meeting with attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, which represented CalMatters, both universities provided some records, which give a first-of-its-kind glimpse into the new dynamics of college sports. They each said they spent about $20.5 million paying athletes in the 2025-26 academic year, which is the maximum amount allowed. UCLA said it paid 229 athletes. UC Berkeley said it paid 147. 

Neither UCLA nor UC Berkeley said which players or teams received the money — even as other universities were more forthcoming.

“We’re simply asking these public institutions to follow the law,” said CalMatters CEO Neil Chase, “and explain what’s being done with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.” 

Chase said CalMatters tried for months to find solutions that would assuage universities’ concerns over student privacy. “But they still refused, so unfortunately we’ve had to take this next step with UCLA and are planning a similar action involving UC Berkeley. ”

San Diego State and UC Riverside provided the most information about student payments. UC Riverside said it gave its male athletes about $200,000, including multiple payments to the men’s basketball team, plus $70,000 for its female athletes. The university did not provide further details before publication about most of the payments.

San Diego State gave its athletes at least $8.6 million in the 2025-26 school year. Of that amount, more than 60% went to the football team. The men’s basketball team received most of the rest. San Diego State did not share additional details, such as how many players on the football or men’s basketball teams received payments. Of the millions paid to athletes at San Diego State, about 3% went to female athletes. 

Private universities, such as Stanford and the University of Southern California, are not subject to the state’s public records laws. 

Public universities have long argued that the money they spend on sports does not come from taxpayers. Most schools and news outlets refer to the payments as “revenue-sharing,” based on the notion that universities are paying athletes using revenue from ticket sales and broadcast or other marketing deals. But experts say these arguments are misleading or impossible to prove. 

Nationally, the vast majority of Division I athletic programs are losing money, not making it, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office: The median college reported losing about $20 million in the 2023-24 academic year.

Within the UC and Cal State systems, universities help cover the shortfall from athletic programs using tuition money, student fees, or their general fund, which includes state taxpayer dollars. In 2024-25, about 20% of UCLA’s athletic budget came from the university’s endowment or general fund. At UC Berkeley, it was nearly 30%. Still, the athletics programs at both universities were in the red that year, facing multi-million-dollar shortfalls. At less lucrative programs, such as UC Riverside, the university’s general fund or endowment pays the bulk of athletic costs.

“Every single dollar that the university allocates is taxpayer money, whether it’s donated or not,” said independent expert Andy Schwarz, a partner at the law firm OSKR who specializes in sports economics. “It’s like if you have a bathtub and say the money on the right is public and the money on the left is private, but it’s all bathwater, swirling around.”

No pay-for-play — but no pay without play

Although college sports have long been a multi-billion-dollar industry, the National Collegiate Athletic Association prevented student athletes from reaping many of the financial benefits beyond athletic scholarships. 

These direct payments to students are possible because of a legal settlement of a class action lawsuit filed by two student athletes, Grant House, a former Arizona State University swimmer, and Sedona Prince, a former University of Oregon women’s basketball player. U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in San Francisco approved the settlement last spring and it went into effect on July 1, 2025.

Many UC and Cal State campuses shared template copies of the payment contracts or agreements they sign with student athletes. While universities and brands can pay athletes to use their name, image or likeness in marketing deals, the NCAA bans them from paying a student to play a sport, so many UC and Cal State payment contracts specifically say they prohibit “pay-for-play.”

But the very same agreements say that students must play the sport in order to continue receiving payment. While college officials may say this isn’t pay-for-play, in practical terms that isn’t true, said Matt Brown, who runs a publication called Extra Points that explains the business of college sports. “The marketability value of a CSU athlete, completely stripped away from the field, is worth functionally nothing.”

The contracts all say that student athletes are not employees. UC San Diego athletes are defined as “independent contractors,” though most other schools avoid labeling their employment status at all. San Jose State specifically says that these athletes are not entitled to workers’ compensation. 

UCLA goes one step further. In its legal agreements, it tells students that they are not employees and that they are also not allowed to sue the campus for employment rights. UCLA students are supposed to consult with a parent, a lawyer or an agent before signing the document, but if they don’t, they have no right to sue for lack of representation. 

Unlike professional athletes in the NFL, MLB and NBA, college athletes are not unionized, despite attempts at both Dartmouth College and the University of Southern California. 

“Essentially what the colleges want is all the benefits of collective bargaining without having to give up any of the downsides that professional sports leagues agree to with their unions, such as minimum salaries and worker compensation if there are injuries,” said Schwarz. 

Unlike student athletes’ payments, the salaries of professional athletes are typically shared publicly, even though the professional associations are private. Journalists and open government advocates have filed lawsuits in at least three other states — New Mexico, Louisiana and South Carolina — calling for their respective public universities to release records of student-athlete payments. 

Athletes are still getting NIL brand deals, too

California bears credit for many of the recent changes to college sports. In 2019, the state helped start a national movement by passing a bill that allowed college students to make their own name, image and likeness deals. Other states quickly followed. 

CalMatters was the first publication to report on the full scope of these brand deals in California. These deals disproportionately favored athletes on the football, men’s basketball and select women’s teams that featured star athletes, such as the UCLA gymnastics team and the Fresno State women’s basketball team. Olympic gold-medalist Jordan Chiles competed for the UCLA gymnastics team, for example. Influencers Haley and Hanna Cavinder played for the Fresno State women’s basketball team. 

Companies such as Toyota, Nike, H&R Block, and Bumble — as well as the 2024 Biden campaign — all signed deals with California athletes to promote their brands, according to records obtained by CalMatters. In some cases, companies paid as much as $300,000 to athletes, often in exchange for favorable social media posts. But the largest deals came from university athletic booster clubs, otherwise known as collectives, which funnel donor money into sports, often with little transparency.

College athletes can still make these brand deals on top of the compensation they receive directly from their universities.  

Since July 1, 2025, UC San Diego signed 18 contracts with its athletes, totaling about $560,000 in direct payments. The university did not disclose which players or teams received the payments. The university also formed a new booster club, SD Tide Collective. About a week after the club was announced, members of the UC San Diego men’s basketball team received additional name, image and likeness payments totaling nearly $500,000 from a group called Tide LLC in exchange for “social media/licensing/appearances,” according to records obtained by CalMatters. UC San Diego did not respond to questions about Tide LLC or about the number of athletes who received money from the company. 

At UC Santa Barbara, however, records show that the number of private brand deals plummeted. In 2024-25, its college athletes with those deals, mostly members of the men’s basketball team, reported earning more than $200,000. This past academic year, student athletes reported earning about $1,000 across 11 different deals.

But as a whole, students appear to be making more money — in direct payments from the university instead of private deals. In the 2025-26 school year, UC Santa Barbara paid its athletes nearly $1.4 million. 

Like many universities, UC Santa Barbara refused to disclose how much money each player or each team received, but the university did say that it signed a total of 26 agreements with students, meaning that the vast majority of athletes received no payment at all.