I get that but I think even without gate revenue things may be as bad or even worse if we had football without fans, depending on what happens with coaching salaries. Payments to coaches plus costs to put on games plus travel costs plus equipment, etc. is likely more than our tv revenue.
I doubt it. We would still get our TV revenue. Bowl revenues, tourney revenues, etc.
Our TV revenue is supposed to go way up this season.
Yeah we’re going to get $7 million, but we also have to produce more content in house which will cost some money. I don’t know how bowls are going to work without ticket revenue. Most of the bowls are really a loss after having to eat ticket guarantees and travel. The CFP revenue would be the big X factor. All the stuff I listed almost certainly costs more than $7 million.
And just to make clear, I’m not hoping we don’t have sports and don’t pay our coaches. I’m just pointing out that even if we have a season things are going to be bad.
Gotta get creative! If we have sports with no fans…set up an a la carte per game streaming service. I would love to be able to stream every game that national carriers aren’t picking up. I’d be willing to pay a ticket’s worth (or two) per game…if only to help the University…and to watch my beloved Coogs! Sorta like a single PPV event…except I would commit to the entire season. Hell…I’d be open to getting even more creative and letting broadcast/radio/tv/film majors do the majority of production work (for class credits, of course).
Would it work…possibly not…but, if the costs of production could be kept low, I think some income could be had by doing this.
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We wouldn’t be able to do that. ESPN has all our rights I think. Any football game that isn’t nationally televised will be on ESPN+.
I would go for that if we could get more than 25,000 people into the stadium. We don’t. No fans would be bad, but not nearly as bad as no season.
Per the Chron, here’s how our revenue broke down last year
$9.6mm in donations
$4.2mm in conference distributions (think this would be like $9mm under the new tv deal)
$4.1mm in licensing
$4.8mm in ticket sales
$34mm in subsidies
Our expenses were about $73mm.
If we had sports without fans I also don’t think we could just have football and basketball. We’d have to have everything. So our expenses would basically be the same, but donations probably drop by at least 50% and probably more since a lot of that is related to seating requirements and donor perks. Ticket revenue drops to zero. I’m not sure we can charge a student fee if they can’t go to games. If that’s the case, that drops to zero.
If having sports with no fans means we can charge the student fee but we can’t if we just don’t have sports, then it’s probably better financially to have sports. If not, then I think it’s reasonably likely we could lose less money just shuttering sports for a year than having them with no fans, especially if it meant we cut back on some of the overhead G&A for this year (which sucks and is something I of course do not want to have happen to anyone). Or if it isn’t better financially it’s likely not the difference between our department sustaining or folding.
I just don’t understand that line of thinking. We have 0 revenue if we don’t play. You can cut everything to zero. Our expenses wouldn’t materially change.
And Tilman and other donors are footing the majority of the bill for Dana and Kelvin. Cutting their salaries doesn’t do much for us. We would have to lay off everyone. And cut a ton of scholarships to even remain viable.
There’s not a lot of variable costs here for us. Majority is fixed. Those don’t go away by not playing this season. Unless we just cut everyone.
Actually, I will give you travel expenses. So, those go away. Not sure the number on that. But our top line item is still next to nothing.
C’mon folks, UH is going to play football and basketball this season. Golly, the media seems to have scared the pants off of some of you guys.
We’re gonna die! Well yeah that’s right, we’re all gonna die…one day. But the chances of UH sports somehow causing our death is about the same as the chances of driving on a Houston roadway or breathing some Houston air causing our death.
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Travel, game day ops, production, equipment, etc. for all our programs. Variable costs are much, much higher than zero even without coaching salaries. Even if variable costs don’t hit the $9mm we’d get from our conference distribution, the difference between losing $35mm or whatever next year vs. $39mm is probably not the difference in sports surviving at UH vs. folding.
Sports with 25%-50% fans that still allow us to charge student fees and get creative to increase revenue per ticket sold is a different story.
Let’s keep the fear-mongering or anti-fear-mongering posts in The Satellite.
Who’s subsidizing the AD? Those are going to be gone. Licensing fees? You can throw that out the window with no games. We’ll be losing a lot more than $9M worth of distributions.
Throw in our cost of scholarships. That we will now have to carry for another year due to the missed season.
i think youve overestimated some of the “savings” that will be had from canelling the season…it’s outdated (from 2014) but UNC’s football and men’s basketball total game day expense (which includes travel cost-- unc had interantional games that year) was about 5million-- the article i read notes “game day expenses” normally account for 10% of the total expenses for the average north carolina school (way less if your in a power conference)
converting to us would mean at most 7million…and likely less as we dont likely travel like UNC …
just a guess but even if we cancelled everythin, ad fired every coach… wwe’d likely still be left with 55mil+ in fixed expenses (paying for students- paying for facilities
from your numbers retaining the student fees (even if it means only students can attend the games), conference distribuution, retaining as much donation as possible is vital…the math makes no sense for no sports
Bingo. Anything is better than 0 on our revenue line.
We’re not going to sell zero UH merchandise next year if we don’t have sports and if some of the licensing comes from game sales and sales on campus that’s going to drop anyways. So maybe that drops by like $1mm in a sports with no fans vs. no sports world.
I don’t think it’s automatic we’d let everyone redshirt and have another year.
Like I said, if sports with no fans can still get us student fees and sports w/o can’t then it’s a pretty material difference. But if we can’t get the student fees in either scenario I don’t think the difference is going to be that big.
We either play the FB & BB games to collect some revenues or we shut down the UH athletics department. I think that’s the only 2 real choices we have. And so for me, it’s a real simple decision.
That was travel for football and basketball alone. I really doubt we can just have football and basketball. If travel/game day makes up 10% of expenditures like it says in the article then for us that’s about $7mm. That almost eats into our entire conference payout.
Bingo. This is exactly right.
It’s not automatically. You have an MBA. If it costs more to generate the revenue than you produce that’s worse. At best we’re talking pretty negligible increases to P&L.
Yes. I know about marginal costs versus marginal revenues. We’re still sitting at a 0 on the revenue side of things. If we’re not playing sports, you won’t be able to convince me we’re filling up lecture halls. Our enrollment is going to drop dramatically. The school won’t be subsidizing our AD with their revenues going through the floor. Not going to be great. Please don’t tel me you think the state is going to subsidize our AD. Not going to be great if we’re not playing this season.
And a marginal cost/marginal revenue analysis is pretty pointless when thinking about college athletics due to the fact that every sport is turning a loss. Except for football. Maybe basketball. It’s just a crappy business model to begin with. And one that definitely can’t survive with a big, fat goose egg in that revenue line.