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Post by Bigfoot on Sept 11, 2015 8:59:31 GMT -6
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Post by BSSN on Sept 11, 2015 10:38:17 GMT -6
Sure, it's a nice stadium, but I can't help but feel like it's a monument to the excesses of college sports. $450 million.
As long as ticket sales can sustain it...
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Post by Bigfoot on Sept 11, 2015 11:53:06 GMT -6
Sure, it's a nice stadium, but I can't help but feel like it's a monument to the excesses of college sports. $450 million. As long as ticket sales can sustain it... Lets see - they gross over $10 million a game in ticket sales, factor in concessions, suites, advertising, merchandise etc. etc. - no problem! Also keep in mind they raised from alumni, business and industry a very significant amount of money to build the facility - done deal!
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Post by bsu0 on Sept 11, 2015 12:10:46 GMT -6
There is PLENTY of moola in AGGIELAND.
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Post by swenocha on Sept 11, 2015 13:33:10 GMT -6
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Post by BSSN on Sept 11, 2015 14:12:23 GMT -6
Man, is that Freudian... I'm sure it's intentional.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2015 14:21:27 GMT -6
Man, is that Freudian... I'm sure it's intentional. That's obscene in more ways than one. The game's a sell-out due to increased female ticket sales.
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Post by 00hmh on Sept 11, 2015 14:34:22 GMT -6
Sure, it's a nice stadium, but I can't help but feel like it's a monument to the excesses of college sports. $450 million. As long as ticket sales can sustain it... Lets see - they gross over $10 million a game in ticket sales, factor in concessions, suites, advertising, merchandise etc. etc. - no problem! Also keep in mind they raised from alumni, business and industry a very significant amount of money to build the facility - done deal! Even in Texas where football is king and locals will come to the game along with a rabid alumni and student fan base, this would make little economic sense without the big gifts that made it possible. They have not increased revenue enough by building THAT MUCH stadium to justify the expensive investment to build it.
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Post by Bigfoot on Sept 11, 2015 16:07:06 GMT -6
Key words "gifts to build it" and we are talking almost funding the entire project. Payback was very compelling to build a unique and state of the art facility. Probably nothing else like it anywhere and it makes perfect sense to me financially!
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Post by bsu0 on Sept 11, 2015 16:42:12 GMT -6
The 12' weiner is named ''The Homewrecker''
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cjohn
Cardinal Recruit
Posts: 9
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Post by cjohn on Sept 12, 2015 1:04:52 GMT -6
Lets see - they gross over $10 million a game in ticket sales, factor in concessions, suites, advertising, merchandise etc. etc. - no problem! Also keep in mind they raised from alumni, business and industry a very significant amount of money to build the facility - done deal! Even in Texas where football is king and locals will come to the game along with a rabid alumni and student fan base, this would make little economic sense without the big gifts that made it possible. They have not increased revenue enough by building THAT MUCH stadium to justify the expensive investment to build it. The stadium was basically paid for by a gift campaign through direct gifts and mandatory "donations" to license seats. Our students were dumb enough to pitch in around $75M or so by voluntarily approving fees via student elections. Not sure of how many years to collect those fees but 10 minimum. Aggies being Aggies. Revenue has be greatly improved due to the large amount of premium seating (requiring large annual donations to keep those seats). The SEC Network will also be increasing revenue pretty drastically. Ironically, we had a difficult time selling out at 82k for years. Come to find out it wasn't because people did not want to come see games, it was because no one wanted to sit in the heat in the bleachers. The North End Zone built in 1998 has a fair amount of premium seating. While we had bleacher tickets available for virtually every game, there was a waiting list for premium seats so long they actually discontinued it. Naturally, we were on the path to decrease capacity to around 75k in the original renovation plans (from the 82k capacity since 1998). The reduction would come in a renovation that decreased bleacher seating and increased premium seating and boxes. This was the plan that was going forward when our then university president Loftin Bowen brought for the concept of basically replacing the entire structure. Many thought it was a pipe dream but the feelers went out and it had very positive feedback. The stars then aligned for us. The SEC happened. The oil and gas industry boomed. Johnny Manziel brought a lot of energy to the alumni base. Boom there you have it. If any of those three events doesn't happen, we may not be sitting on this stadium now. One other thing you will notice. The second and third decks on the East side where the students sit are the old decks that were constructed in 1969 and 1980 respectively. Changing them would mean bringing them to current code which would mean fewer student seats, so they were left alone. It is a gameday atmosphere that very few can rival, especially when we have a defense. The crowd feeds off of defense and we have not had a great on in nearly 20 years. Many comments coming from ASU fans in Houston was we had NRG stadium going louder than their experiences in Autzen. The place will get very loud, especially when Ball State is on 3rd down. If you want to know how the math works, we had roughly 10k students in 1970. When I went to school in the mid 80s we had roughly 35k students. We blew right through 60k students in the last couple of years. A&M has had a long history of strong ties between the alumni and the university. Those students in the boom from the early 70s to the mid 80s are now in their prime earning years, so the pool of potential money out there has grown exponentially and so have the donations. Ironically, our wealthiest alumns tend to only donate to the academic side. A&M had an effort around 2010 to raise $1B for academics in a 2 year plan and raised all of the money in the first 6 months. It is likely the growth will continue. The state of Texas only has two flagship universities (A&M and Texas). Texas is limited on growth because of their campus location in Austin. A&M sits on 5200 acres, so we are likely to continue to see fast growth until the state can promote another university to flagship status. Texas Tech, Houston, and some UT-xxx schools are all battling for that now. California did a lot better job designing their university systems than the state of Texas did. A&M and Texas have more than a dozen campuses each, but the main campuses get treated as flagship and the other member institutions (UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington, A&M-Corpus Christi, etc) are kind of treated second fiddle. Apologies for war and peace. I am fighting a bout of insomnia.
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Post by cardfan on Sept 12, 2015 5:51:41 GMT -6
Good stuff! We've battled attendance issues for years, especially since the car industry left Muncie. Our fan base has aged and alumni don't have much reason to stay in town after graduating. Our 2008 team drew well but other than that we don't do as well as we should.
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Post by 00hmh on Sept 12, 2015 7:23:03 GMT -6
Good stuff! We've battled attendance issues for years, especially since the car industry left Muncie. Our fan base has aged and alumni don't have much reason to stay in town after graduating. Our 2008 team drew well but other than that we don't do as well as we should. Our situation is not remotely similar. This is Indiana. Texas and football are still like Indiana and Basketball used to be. We can point to New Castle with a high school gym bigger than college gyms in Texas, and nobody in Texas would understand, but for football... This guy is talking about having trouble filling 82000 seats! We can't fill 15K seats with real paying customers at less than 1/2 the ticket price. And, with great respect for that passion for football, this was still not an economically sensible project. Not on the basis of expanded revenue to finance the project. They simply did not expand attendance enough to pay for the stadium on the basis of attendance or concessions. but. This was funded by giving that reflects alumni wealth and a real Texas size passion for football. That makes the University decision easy. That passion for football, coming back to campus for a football game can be monetized. It does connect that alumni base, and that means giving by alumni. With their much larger (and wealthier) alumni base which after all could contribute enough to build a cathedral, this project is like building Notre Dame in Paris. They built a shrine to football! By comparison our alumni loyalty to the school may be no less, we have had impressive fund raising for academics, too. But alumni numbers, and dollars, and almost certainly passion for football is considerably less.
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Post by cardfan on Sept 12, 2015 7:31:45 GMT -6
And I compared us how? I simply mentioned we've battled attendance for years. I'm just a moron, Sherlock? I wouldn't compare Indiana to Texas in any way, shape, or form. But, you've always got to show off your vast knowledge.
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Post by 00hmh on Sept 12, 2015 7:40:40 GMT -6
Sure, it's a nice stadium, but I can't help but feel like it's a monument to the excesses of college sports. $450 million. As long as ticket sales can sustain it... Lets see - they gross over $10 million a game in ticket sales, factor in concessions, suites, advertising, merchandise etc. etc. - no problem! Also keep in mind they raised from alumni, business and industry a very significant amount of money to build the facility - done deal! This is not about revenue. That does not support the investment. They did not get an increase in revenue of 10 million a game... I will grant that they have huge revenue, but with the old "substandard" dinky little place they had a hell of a revenue stream already. This is about alumni giving. cjohn did point out they raised even more money in gifts for academics. So it's an excess. We really should look at what 450 million could do for students and the larger mission of the University. But, then maybe alumni would not give $450 mil more for that than they already do. And, let's give credit. It is is a magnificent excess!
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