Chancellor John Wiley and Athletic Director Barry Alvarez announced Friday that revenue generated from the Big Ten Network would be distributed to campus entities outside the UW Athletic Department.
As part of a 20-year contract between UW-Madison and BTN, the network will generate revenue of more than $6 million for the university.
UW-Madison recently decided to channel that total into funding university libraries, need-based scholarships and athletics, according to Amy Toburen, director of University Communications.
Wiley said the university wants to use the money to help all UW-Madison students.
It is critical to show campus benefit in some strategic areas that are shared by our general student population and our student athletes,"" Wiley said in a statement.
About 30 percent of the total revenue will go toward the UW-Madison campus, with portions allotted to Student Financial Services and the General Library System.
The remaining 70 percent will be distributed to UW Athletics.
Toburen said the UW Athletic Department plans to create an academic performance center and a facility for women's ice hockey with its $4.1 million portion, in addition to other improvements.
The performance center will aim to join ""academic and strength conditioning for the margin of excellence that we want to be able to offer our athletes here,"" she said.
The university says its efforts to expand into areas besides athletics are unparalleled among many other Big Ten institutions.
According to Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director for external relations, many schools are allocating more money to athletics rather than academics.
""I'm not aware of any [schools] that are giving more to academics than we are,"" he said.
About $1.3 million will go toward need-based scholarships and over $440,000 to libraries on campus.
According to Ken Frazier, director of the general library system, UW-Madison is ""well behind"" other Big Ten universities in funding library collections.
UW-Madison spends about $10 million on the libraries, which is $4 million less than the University of Minnesota, Frazier said.
He said the price of electronic journals, like LexisNexis and ProQuest has been increasing at about eight percent per year, while the library collection budget has only been increasing annually by one percent.
""Right now we're really anxious about being able to fund our electronic collection and maintain the databases that we know students and researchers use,"" Frazier said.
He said other priorities in future years will be to maintain study spaces and long hours of access.
Although he said he was ""thrilled"" by the contribution, he added state support is also necessary to make necessary improvements to the library.
""We can't carry the libraries and the university on the strength of the Big Ten Network, but it really helps a lot,"" Frazier said.
