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Texas Announces $60.85 Million Development in College Sports Power Rankings

Originally posted on Athlon Sports
By Rowan Fisher-Shotton | Last updated Sep 26, 2025 12:31 PM ET

A new snapshot of college-sports influence emerged on Friday with the Texas Longhorns leading the pack on social platforms, according to social analytics firm Zoomph.

For the 2024–25 academic year, Zoomph’s rankings, which aggregate athletic-department and individual-sport accounts, put Texas’ social value at $60,858,580, ahead of No. 2 Ohio State ($51,442,789) and No. 3 LSU ($48,021,431).

Social value is considered "the equivalent media value of social media content based on impressions, engagements and video views using industry standard CPM, CPV and CPE rates."

Simply put, the figure represents the advertising equivalent of Texas’ organic social reach, not a check written to the school.

The Longhorns' social media team reshared the news on X, with the message, "The numbers don't lie - Texas has the highest social media brand value in college sports ."

the numbers don't lie - Texas has the highest social media brand value in college sports #HookEm | @Zoomph pic.twitter.com/SzASGDthTx
— Texas Longhorns (@TexasLonghorns) September 25, 2025

At the beginning of the year, Texas' athletic department reported roughly $331.9 million in operating revenue for FY2024, with college football generating the lion’s share of exposure and income, according to Sports Business Journal.

That on-field presence, paired with highly marketable names and coordinated content strategies, appears to power the Longhorns’ digital dominance.

High-value NIL profiles like Arch Manning's ($5.5 million, leads all college sports) and offseason brand deals, plus amplified content on game days, convert into huge impressions and video views, which is precisely what Zoomph’s social-value metric monetizes.

Brand influence in college sports has shifted from purely ticket sales and TV rights to a blended economy where owned social content carries measurable commercial value.

For Texas, the Zoomph ranking is validation that its digital strategy, boosted by football’s national profile and marketable athletes like Manning, scales beyond game-day revenue into sponsorship and NIL valuations.

The metric won’t replace traditional revenue reporting, but it’s quickly becoming a standard part of how college programs measure value, with Texas setting the pace.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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