A Sea Of Red

Someone posted an article on AGS from Montana's AD regarding a move from FCS to FBS. It's a good article overall, but I just wanted to point this out:

Football revenues usually fuel the train. Based on figures for the reporting period 2002-06, football revenues accounted for an average of $60.7 million of Ohio State's yearly total $104.7 million brought into the athletics department coffers. Meanwhile at Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish football team accounted for $61.4 million of the school's $78.1 million, helped of course by a lucrative television package the school has with NBC.

Among FCS schools, the University of Montana was second in average generated football revenues over that same period ($5.1 million annually, compared to Delaware at $5.4 million). The entire UM Athletics budget is roughly $11.5 million. UM is the only FCS school in the western United States in the top 10 in average football revenue produced. Others in the Top 10 are Bethune Cookman ($4.2 million), Appalachian State ($4.07 million), Liberty ($4.02 million), Fordham ($3.994 million), Southern ($3.864 million), Furman ($3.756 million), Tennessee State ($3.709 million) and Colgate ($3.681 million).

Apparently we're 5th in the nation in terms of Average Football Revenue Produced (and I have no clue why I capitalized that).

Football is supposed to bring in the money, so as to support the non-revenue generating teams (Rutgers women's basketball, who you may remember as the... uh... NCAA Women's runners-up) lost something like 2.5 million last year. Football is basically designed to generate revenue, so as to subsidize the other programs.

My question though is, what is our operating cost? Certainly we had to spend a lot of money last year to upgrade our facilities, re-turf our field, and pay off Karcher's contract. I know someone had the budget structure for Winthrop's prospective team on this board earlier. It would be interesting to see how our revenue compares with our expense.

Still -- hats off to LU for bringing in the dough -- especially because last year we only played one money game, right?

do we get money for being on tv on the liberty channel? I know we do for being on other channels like espn or whatever.

I heard on the local radio station that Old Dominion's football program, which is starting up in 2009, is looking at a quality I-AA school to have the "honors" of playing them in their first game. Supposedly, there are a lot of schools who want in on this deal. Does anyone know if Liberty is looking at Old Dominion, located in Norfolk, Va., to play in the near future?

JDUB wrote:do we get money for being on tv on the liberty channel? I know we do for being on other channels like espn or whatever.

There's no advertising spots so I highly doubt it.

I saw a taco bell commercial when watching a basketball game on the liberty channel once or twice...i was shocked

SuperJon wrote:

JDUB wrote:do we get money for being on tv on the liberty channel? I know we do for being on other channels like espn or whatever.

There's no advertising spots so I highly doubt it.

Plus aren't they like the same entity? It'd be like paying money to yourself. Like does a GE washing machine pay to advertise on NBC? They're both owned by GE.

LUconn wrote:Like does a GE washing machine pay to advertise on NBC?

Not if they put it in a Tracy Jordan sketch.

SJ dont take this at all as an attack at you or your credibility....but I find this extremely hard to believe
there is something not right...how on earth with the costs involved in d1 football do we turn a profit...its certainly not in ticket sales with nearly half of the attendance at games unpaid/unticketed....even if we were "selling" every seat out we wouldnt have that kinda year fiscally when you weigh that against expenses...
could this be a anamoly? ex. only the last reported financial year turned that profit?
how does the author prove the accuracy of his numbers?

That's just revenue. Nowhere does it say profit. The costs probably come out of the revenue.

As for the credibility of it, it was a study done by Montana's athletic department. It's legit.

If my math is correct, we are making nearly a quarter mill ($219,000) just on the luxury sky boxes: 6 boxes x $36,000.

Cider Jim wrote:If my math is correct, we are making nearly a quarter mill ($219,000) just on the luxury sky boxes: 6 boxes x $36,000.

We're not making any off of the luxury boxes. The price that fans pay just cover costs according to the AD.

montana's athletic dept. has zero to no credibility with anyone in regards to financial figures other than their own and most likely did not research this
and if we are talking revenue and not profit...then who the heck cares what your revenue is- the walmart across wards road prolly has a 4 million dollar revenue a week if not more...profit talks and there is no way that our athletic dept. let alone the football team is getting out of the red too often
there are only a handful of completely profitable athletic depts. (mainly state schools with a few exceptions like Notre Dame and Duke? or USC) but certainly we are not at that level nor do i think you meant that by your post....
idk ....interesting topic anyways sj
beat coastal

So research done by one of the top FCS schools, and one of the few that could make the jump, isn't credible? Why not?

SuperJon wrote:So research done by one of the top FCS schools, and one of the few that could make the jump, isn't credible? Why not?

Because they probably most likely maybe did not research it. Can't you read?

Oh, that's right. One of the most successful FCS schools didn't research it and the AD is speaking out of his butt. I got it.

I would agree that LU football at this point isn't generating nearly a $4.2M figure. I would contend that it operates barely out of the red, if not in the red when it's all said and done. We played one paying school this year, and chartered a flight to that school (Toledo). I don't know what it costs to fly a 727 to Toledo and back, but I would bet most of the cash we got from Toledo paid for that airplane ride. Plus, if EVERY one of the 15,000 fans packed into Williams and each paid $10.00 per seat, that would only generate $150,000 per game. Currently, there's not consistently 15,000 per game, and many of them aren't paying anyway. And we had what, 5 home games? We're still well under $1M here.

Until the big retailers have LU stuff right next to VT and UVA, the athletic profit margin is going to be way down there...

Where are all the business majors at?


rev·e·nue
–noun

an amount of money regularly coming in.



prof·it
-noun

the monetary surplus left to a producer or employer after deducting wages, rent, cost of raw materials, etc



The quoted text says nothing about being in the black or red, nor any type of profit. It only mentions revenue. I don't have any hard facts, but I've always been under the understanding that very fewFBS teams make a profit without a TV contract and virtually no FCS teams do under any circumstances.

LUconn wrote:Where are all the business majors at?


rev·e·nue
–noun

an amount of money regularly coming in.



prof·it
-noun

the monetary surplus left to a producer or employer after deducting wages, rent, cost of raw materials, etc



The quoted text says nothing about being in the black or red, nor any type of profit. It only mentions revenue. I don't have any hard facts, but I've always been under the understanding that very fewFBS teams make a profit without a TV contract and virtually no FCS teams do under any circumstances.

Yay! Smartness saves the day.

LUconn wrote:Where are all the business majors at?


rev·e·nue
–noun

an amount of money regularly coming in.



prof·it
-noun

the monetary surplus left to a producer or employer after deducting wages, rent, cost of raw materials, etc



The quoted text says nothing about being in the black or red, nor any type of profit. It only mentions revenue. I don't have any hard facts, but I've always been under the understanding that very few I-A teams make a profit without a TV contract and virtually no I-AA teams do under any circumstances.

Fixed it for you.

I was looking to see what you changed... I should have known...

When attempting to explain our reported revenue numbers, why is nobody mentioning our marketing deals and small corporate sponsorships? I would have to believe that those would count, as well.

Some of the deals our athletic marketing department makes are package deals (with signage, sponsorship, etc. for many of our sports and at more than one of our sports venues) and other are service trades, I'm sure. But still many are football-only deals that could be factored into the overall add-up of LU's football revenues, couldn't they?