Just announced for 2017 another home game for The Cats. In September we will host Nevada to bring our home schedule up to 8 plus a Soldier Field game against The Illini.
Non conference game
- Thread starter Williesfan
- Start date
Home schedule goes up seven with this game. NU is at Duke in 2017. This is example A of the scheduling problem caused by the BIG's new nine game schedule. It will be hard to offer home and homes to nonconference schools like we had with Nevada back in 2006-07 if you want to get up the seven home games in the years you play five BIG road games. So you have to pay more to get them here without a payback visit. Speaking of that, doesn't Army still owe us a visit?
NU is paying Nevada $1.2 Million to come to Evanston. That's a lot of dough for a school that cannot pay its players spending money......[kidding]
I perused fbsschedules.com they listed the first game as the spring game at Ryan Field. I didn't pay attention to who but only the where. I stand corrected.
On a high note we still have essentially 8 home games.
It sounds like a lot of money but I wonder what the expenses are for travel, meals and housing for the team, coaches, trainers, assistants, equipment and managers etc. are? then add in the gate, which I would think is a money maker.
Any body have any ideas?
Great analysis on Inside NU, bottom line is NU probably loses money if you don't count TV revenue. This from MrBigCup:
Let’s assume NU draws 30K paying attendees to the game (I think I’m being generous bc i’m excluding students and other tickets NU donates to charities for the game, but roll with it).
Of the 30K, 10K are $50/seat, 10K are $30/seat, and 10K are $20/seat. The math isn’t that clean and some tickets are part of season tix while others are single-game, so if anyone thinks the numbers are grossly off, have a stab at it.
So that totals $1M in ticket revenue. On top of that, let’s have each attendee spend $10 on food/official swag – now $1.3M. We’ll say Ryan Field has 1,000 parking spots for $50 each (no idea if either of these are accurate) so $1.35M. Throw on another $100K for in-stadium advertising (no idea of stadium ads are priced per game but at the very least all the ads that run during the game for Evanston Subaru, lou Malnati’s, and that heating and A/C company) to get to $1.45M
If you assume there are ~100 employees (concession staff, security, etc.) and they each get $100 to work the game, you take off $10K. Let’s round it up to $50K to account for lighting, smoke machine, production of content for the video board, etc.
So I’m at $1.4M in net profit for the game pre-payout.
As noted above, you need to double the payout to approximate the cost of one incremental home game relative to just a straight home-and-home across a 2 game span. Therefore, paying Nevada $1.2M for 0.5 incremental home games means it costs $2.4M to buy a home game….which is $1.0M more than NU can afford to break even.
Unless my math is way off, we are either missing a financial kickback from TV for having the game at home (e.g., the game at Duke couldn’t get carried on BTN) or it’s worth $1.0M to get home field advantage from a competitive standpoint.
There must become savings in travel and meals but I just remembered that the team stays in a hotel even for home games so that does;'t count. It is a nice paycheck to Evanston businesses but the University doesn't get much credit for that as it is also a great inconvenience to the residents because of traffic etc.
Interesting. Hail to Purple was listing (with a question mark) a home and away series with Rice in '17 and '18. That '17 game in Evanston is probably on the scrap heap now, so I wonder about the game here in Houston in '18. Did Rice back out of this series for some reason? Why else would NU now be paying Nevada $1.2M to play in Evanston?
Will it be the Wildcats in the shotgun against Nevada's historic pistol offense?
I'd agree with the thought that the money is insane. Clearly unless we are incredible next year, the thought of + 30 or 35k attendance for Nevada is a very hard sell. Virtually no help from oppositions faithful to aid attendance numbers. This is almost baffling.
Is it customary to pay any out of conference foe? Or only when there isn't a reciprocal agreement? Does anybody have insight on how these pay for play deals are reached?
You are right Not accurate. Non Con games are more like 30-35 tops. Also parking is 30 and they are already presold so probably lose money
...but you do count tv revenue, and the other benefits NU and the B1G enjoy by going to a nine-game conference schedule.
I am not a fan of the nine-game conf. schedule, but obviously a majority of the conference decision makers saw value in it so I will trust their wisdom and their concern for the budget. I don't believe Phillips is haphazardly paying Nevada $1.2M to come here.
