Bingo, no matter what colors the person wears, NU is getting paid. Various threads over the past few seasons have touched on why NU fandom hasn't really grown. It will be naturally harder for a private university to grow a fanbase, when a minority of the student body is from Illinois on top of the fact that NU enrollment is a fraction of that of the B1G public universities. The alumni association is strong, but is spread out all over the place.
Really good X thread on the fan base/temp stadium ticket situation
- Thread starter Baz=Heisman
- Start date
And it all get worse when the new stadium seats 30k as oppposed to good old Ryan which seated 50k. Now we are cutting it down to 30k.
But when I complained about this on this very message board I got attacked was to told so shut up because people said "finally we will have home field advantage". I said Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State fans will just buy up all the seats. But nobody listens to me sigh. Oh well.
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Huh. So let me get this straight, since we can’t fill up a 35k seat with NU fans, you claim that we might as well get a 50k seat stadium that will be full of OSU, PSU and Michigan fans? The more the merrier approach. Sure you don’t work for the game day operations team at NU?
If this is what NU does, it would be extremely short sighted. It would be detrimental to developing a winning culture and recruiting top notch players. A vicious cycle.
What percentage of revenues is earned from game day operations? I’d imagine that percentage is shrinking with the influx of TV money.
I think NU does give a shit on what color shirt the fans wear. The problem is the they need to pay more money to talented marketing and sales professionals that can develop an actual successful business model instead of being cheap and hiring fresh faced inexperienced kids.
100% this.
I think this depends on who you ask. I think Phillips cared a lot, and I bet he was instrumental in downsizing the # of seats in the stadium knowing that the more seats there are, the more fans from Iowa, Ohio State, and our other B1G relatives in the midwest/driving distance will come for their periodic weekend in Chicago. I think his goal was to downsize, get purple butts in seats and keep them there. Perhaps with a different sitting president or AD at the time this call was made, they would've opted for 50K+ and gladly taken the money from visiting fans at the detriment of program optics.
Downsize? Check.
Get purple butts in seats and keep them there? Fail.
With apologies for rehashing this for the upteenth time. IU was guaranteed 2,000 (by big10 rule [exception made in ‘24&25 to reduce from 3 to 2k]). That meant, the crowd should have been 5/1 Northwestern. Either, a) northwestern could not sell <10,000 seats to its own fans (in a one-of-a-kind visual setting) to a conference game…or b). Northwestern fans had the tickets and sold them to someone willing to pay the asking price* (probably wearing red).
Why will this be any different in a stadium where NU is selling 32k seats (capacity minus visitor allotment) vs the current venue less than one third the size?
*. Using a ticket service in partnership with NU. Northwestern understands exactly how this works and, signified by its partnership, endorses it.
https://www.wsj.com/sports/football...l-northwestern-af16f470?mod=sports_lead_story
Its amazing how perspectives vary. Today's Wall Street Journal. Lead sports story.
Its amazing how perspectives vary. Today's Wall Street Journal. Lead sports story.
No. The most important hire in the stadium project is the agency that will be booking the event entertainment. Demand for football is well-established and small. Without fielding a consistently winning team, something that in the NIL era and the expanded B1G is effectively impossible for NU, game tickets will always generate but peanuts.
Luxury boxes are the real cash cow and the main focus. Those will sell at high prices based on the full year entertainment package. Six initial mega concerts growing to 15 in five years, toss in 6 football games, various smaller concerts and other events to make luxury boxes a significant new revenue stream for NU. That is their plan.
They won’t be wasting time cultivating and serving 15,000 season ticket holders who pay $250 per game ticket. They will be laser focused on attracting the acts that will lead to folks paying several orders of magnitude more to enjoy them in style with the appetizers, aperitifs and dessert carts rolling by.
I don't understand the economics of this. If a concert is coming to town, why would NU be selling tickets to it or have the boxes sold already. 1. Wouldn't whoever is promoting the event want to sell those seats at the highest price available? 2. Why would anybody buy a box that in clouds a bunch of events they may or may not care about?
NU’s sports media licensing partner is part of a conglomerate that also manages performing talent. There are significant advantages to performing outside the City of Chicago as union labor requirements create greater venue costs in town. NU with its partner can assemble a very attractive slate of concerts sufficient to attract a very high price for luxury boxes. Basic non-box tickets are sold event-by-event.
The new redevelopment plan announced for the United Center includes a musical venue to seat about 6000. NU can get all the warm weather events of that size as part of its schedule.
Northwestern does have a school that caters to locals. The University College/School of Continuing Studies/School of Professional Studies, or whatever they call it now, graduates hundreds of undergrads every year (not to mention professional degrees), and they are primarily Chicago locals. If nothing else, they should try to get them go to games with their families.
When I went to grad school at another Big Ten school, they tried very hard to get us involved with going to football games, more than they did when I was an undergrad at NU. It is especially effective at creating fans, especially if they did not go to a school with a major football program for undergrad.
I don't believe Northwestern does much to try get those people to games. Free tickets, food, and drinks would probably go a long way to getting people to the games, and hopefully they become fans. Shoot, if you offered free food and admission to the grad school students anywhere at Northwestern, I think it would be hard to keep them away. When I was in grad school, the students were always on the lookout for functions they could mooch off of. LOL
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