Nice job Just Gary. Glad to see you back in action full time. Hope we can get together again for a game or two this season.
Mike Wright to NU
- Thread starter Medill '03
- Start date
Every team uses the portal to some degree. Again, at the elite programs they use it less. And rely primarily on players they recruited out of high school. Whoyis this so hard?
ok great. Elite programs are awesome. Best thing since sliced bread.. I am now in love with them. Go Elite programs!
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Exactly. Georgia did the same thing. They “dumped” close to 30 themselves. Of course when you get those 30 bites at the apple for the best HS talent on Earth, you are going to hit on some stars. The other 20 that don’t pan out are pushed to the Portal. Elite programs then Cherry pick the replacements. The biggest gain for these Elite programs is the ability to get rid of the recruiting mistakes. This is the impact of the portal for them, and it leads to more quality or quantity with incoming transfers. It’s not difficult to dissect!
And I said this over and over. We are entering the days of 300 dollar tickets to attend a game at NU and I for one do not like it. Keep in mind if we have 30,000 capacity some seats will go to the kids going to school. Maybe 4000? I think that is what it is now (50% of undergrad admissions which is about 8000 for us). So that will bring capacity down even more. It is like the NU administration said "Hey let's build a great concert facility, let's do Luke Combs and Boston Pops Orchestra concerts and hey - we can play football in it too!". Normal fans, normal working people, people who got their undergrad degrees at NU and not graduate degrees at Kellog, Med School or NU Law school degrees will all be priced out. I have said this before but I keep getting shouted down or people say "well I don't want Ohio State fans in there for our games". I for one enjoy the opposing fans, we cheer, they cheer, it is noisy, etc.
Oh well, you'll see what I mean in three years. BTW - I think the place will be breathtaking. Gorgeous! But I won't be able to afford going on those occasions when I am in Evanston/Chicago and that saddens me! I hope the Kellog people enjoy it. Watch out, you will probably be sitting next to a Northwestern lawyer so don't do anything too crazy. (Just kidding of course but you get the point).
I grew up a New York Knicks basketball fan but nowadays even the crappiest seats are a couple hundred dollars (look it up if you don't believe me, the prices, the tix, it is all online now). MSG and the Knicks now cater to the Wall Street and Law office crowd. I am seriously thinking of switching to the Nets because I don't want to root for a team that I can never attend a game because it will bankrupt me (figuratively speaking) and if I take my two sons, forget about it! Its nearly a thousand bucks! i don't want that to happen at my beloved school (not that I would switch rooting teams of course, just talking in general) but it seems that NU want to cater do to the rich people crowd and that I think is a shame. And the way the stadium is designed it does not seem like it can be expanded.
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Welcome to major sports in the 21st century. The average fan was priced out years ago. Now even the upper middle class is being priced out.
Comparing demand for NU football to NY Knicks B Ball at the garden is hyperbole to an extreme.
Not really. I lived out of town and could always get reasonable secondary market tix for like 5 of seven games. Now I live close and won't be able to get them
I guess I was thinking pro sports, but even college sports is crazy unless you can find someone dumping tickets late
How could you possibly state that with that level of confidence in a pure hypothetical?
Restated: *I am very concerned that, having returned to the area after 30 plus years, and looking forward to being a season ticket holder, the tickets will be so scarce and/or overpriced that I cannot, in good conscience, spend exorbitant amounts on such entertainment."
It isn’t like we were filling the old stadium with our fans. Outside of 2018 (when we played Notre Dame), the new Ryan Field would hold all the Northwestern fans who attended games in the last 25 years. There were sellouts and those extra seats were mainly filled with opposing fans. That did not give us a home field advantage. So, what is wrong with a stadium that is the right size for our University? The school has tried to market as Chicago’s Big Ten team and really got no increase in fans. I bet there will be ways for alums to get tickets. I don’t think they will find 35,000 people paying $300 for each game. What was going to change in the next 25 years to increase attendance? I doubt playoff appearances are going to suddenly wake Chicago up to NU football.
Adding 15,000 more seats would have more than doubled the price of the stadium. Evanston would have had to agree to 20 more concert dates to make that viable. Ryan is rich but wasn’t going to give another billion so that Ohio State fans can have a seat every 3 years.
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We are going to find out the elasticity of demand for NU tickets. How many of us are ready for PSL or mandatory four-figure donations to the university as a requirement for box seats with seat-side concession services? And no cheaper option provided.
They know the size of the fan base but I suspect their plan to extract more revenue from each of us is suspect. The novelty factor of a fancy new stadium wears out within a season or two.
They could have spent $400mm on a complete renovation rather than a tear down and not drawn from the endowment. Instead, they need to recoup all of that through box sales at high prices. This will require the 20 more concerts which will be happening in future years.
More doom and gloom. The scarcity of tickets and PSL or mandatory four figure donations is pure conjecture.
There will be more premium seating, that's for sure, but I think there will be thousands of regular season ticket packages. And all the seats will be closer to the action like the new Welsh-Ryan where all the upper deck views are great.
There's not going to be anything from endowment. The Ryan family is covering near half the cost, another $30-50 million is future value of concerts, and then other donors will cover the rest. And the AD might even have included parts of the increased conference distributions from TV + CFP into paying for this (average conference distribution will be $30 million per year larger in 2026 compared to 2023).
Not true. It came from my ticket agent when I spoke with him immediately after the stadium plan was announced. Maybe they have changed their plans but I got the clear impression that to retain my tickets I would need to make a substantive donation.
Ok. Even if incremental fundraising covers what might otherwise have been an endowment draw (and at $15 BILLION, what’s a couple hundred million drawn?), the point is that a renovation a la Wrigley makes more sense from a cost and market standpoint.
Apparently, live music is going to explode in the future. There will be so many acts that can sell 20,000 plus tickets that the new stadium will be booked 25 times just during the summer months. Amazing.
Heard the same song and dance for basketball tickets. After much angst, there really isn’t a great deal of difference except one section reserved for the fat cats.
Here’s the facts to back you up:
List of entertainment events at the United Center - Wikipedia
Here’s the facts to back you up:
List of entertainment events at the United Center - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
“Summer months.”
WR has not replaced the UC as a main venue for major concerts as is the plan for the new RF. The reasonable budget for its renovation did not compel NU to collaborate with its sports licensing partner to open a new revenue stream. They should name the new structure ESRF Arena as it will host “entertainment and sports” events in that order of priority.
I wish they had followed the WR model and performed a refurbishment of RF. It really seems the renovated WR is big a success.
There were 26 events in 2023 between May and September so you were only off by one!
NU wouldn’t be able to host events in September due to the football season, nice try though.
Given Ryan Field is kaput, continuing to wish NU had refurbished it instead is the definition of futility.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It’s clearly too late for Ryan Field.
There are concerts at the UC all throughout basketball and hockey seasons, no? They famously held a circus at that time each year.
Because a basketball court is taken down and removed for those kind of events, then can be re-installed in a matter of hours. And the ice is simply covered over, left untouched.
Even if the new Ryan Field is turf (which we think it is, but not 100% certain), there are much more real impacts to the playing surface in a football stadium. At the very least turf would have to be re-rolled to even out any lumps in the subsurface, etc., which takes a while. Grass would obviously be a whole different ballgame.
There will certainly not be grass in the new stadium (aside from that smoked during either 4 months or 5 of major concert events). We don’t need to quibble about how effective the roadies might be during future Septembers.
The larger point is that the business model for the new stadium is an entertainment complex with elite seating arrangements at high cost for boxes (luxury and other). Why would NU make the silly claim that they need six concerts to cover their operating costs or they wouldn’t build the stadium? They need to sell those boxes!
It is appropriate to ask why I care about this now that, as noted, the stadium has been demolished. I care because I feel NU has not been honest with us on so many fronts, ranging from the stadium to the scandal. I have been a loyal fan for a long time and an alum for longer.
And I’m disappointed and feel like I may be nearing the end of a really good, long run.
Only mention grass because both Pat Ryan and Pat Fitzgerald were both big natural grass guys. Fitz is proudly gone, but there’s always the possibility that Ryan decides that’s what wants (and decides to bankroll its maintenance).
Withdrawing your support is your choice. I’m confident NU would be just fine. There will unfortunately be some fan turnover as the whole operation modernizes.
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