LSU would only agree to a game in Baton Rouge or a neutral site. They and just about every other school in the SEC or Big Ten don’t have the man flesh to play a true road game out of conference.
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I can’t see the financial benefit being all that much better at NRG once you lose all revenue from TDECU, but I’m sure it’s better for recruiting to see a full NRG against LSU than 30K at TDECU against someone else.
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An athletic director at UT or ATM or LSU would be FIRED if they were to agree to play UH at TDECU with anything less than a ~$4 million guarantee. And since TDECU only has 40,000 seats, even with a $100/game ticket, UH would make absolutely nothing - 0.00 - for hosting such a game. So how does that help to fund UH athletics? It doesn’t and so that will never happen!
A more valid comparison for the UH AD would be to schedule LSU at Reliant with ~60K fans vs scheduling Rice at TDECU with ~30K fans. (OK, so I’m being a bit generous there).
So there’s no question in my mind that an annual game with LSU at Reliant would be FAR more profitable for UH than any non-conference opponent that UH can schedule at TDECU.
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Can’t begin to describe how much that would be the most infinitely and emotionally most embarrassing thing ever.
Playing home games at nearby stadiums on a regular basis can create some interesting opportunities and lots of teams do that now. To refuse to consider that (that being doubling seat capacity) because we play all of our home games at TDECU is very shortsighted and shallow thinking, imho.
Got news for you. Ohio State, Notre Dame and Alabama ain’t playing in front of 40,000. That number is around 80,000.
It’s a new landscape out there if you haven’t noticed.
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I hope it’s Star Pizza. Support businesses that support UH. Probably the night before at the hotel.
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Wouldn’t 30K at TDECU net 2-3 mil?
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Texas has played Rice at Reliant for the past 15-20 years.
As if Texas needs more recruiting advantage in the City of Houston.
No, I would think that it’s not even close.
So say a ~30k attendance at TDECU @ ~$60/avg ticket = ~$1.8 mil less ~$300K to the visitor = ~$1.5 mil gross to UH (before operating costs) - with little to no marketing hype or national TV exposure.
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It might gross it, but not net.
parking and concessions as well? I think it’s worth it for the exposure but I really don’t think the financial impact is all that much.
FWIW, if we were hosting a Texas or A&M at home, low-end ticket prices would likely be well north of $100, and average price would be higher than that. Nosebleed seats at DKR or Kyle or Death Valley usually run into the triple digits, especially in a good year. People who sold their Texas tickets in 2023 were making back the entire cost of the season ticket in some cases.
I’d anticipate that even promising them $4MM would pay out more than our median home game.
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For the most part, Texas has really only played Rice at DKR over the last 15 years. They’ve only played at NRG once since 2010, and they have no future matchups scheduled.
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That kind of hypothetical matchup will never happen. I was told 15+ years ago, ATM made well over $5 million per home game…and so there is no chance whatsoever…none…that they would ever schedule UH at TDECU.
And even if they did, the scalping ticket prices that you mentioned would not go to fund UH athletics…but rather to UH season ticket holders who would sell their tickets to try to recoup some or most of their overall season ticket costs.
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I’ll take your word for it. I know the last few times UT played Rice in Houston, they played at Reliant. i didn’t realize it was that many years ago.
I believe the only way UH could come close to making what they make at Reliant Stadium is if they ramp up the dynamic pricing at TDECU for the marquee games. That comes with pros and cons. STH get upset that the feature game of the season costs so much more than the conference games, and the opposing fans buy UH season tickets just for one game. That is great for ST sales, but not so great to have empty seats for the rest of the games.
Even with dynamic football pricing, there is no way TDECU can financially overcome selling potentially 25,000 more tickets at Reliant with a full house.
Why don’t we just work on filling our stadium up for every home game, sell concessions, sell merch, sell tickets and see where that gets us. We haven’t done that in 13 years, it might work to our advantage.
How many weighing in on this thread with all the ideas on revenue and who attend fewer than 1 game per season?
As a season ticket holder I want the seat that I purchased. 1 game at Reliant every few years is ok, like next year vs. LSU. I don’t want to give up one of my home games per year, when they survey me that’s what I’ll tell them.
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You made your point.
Let me ask you the following:
How do you plan on building a 40k crowd regularly attending our home games?
I’ll wait to read your answer. Thank you for chiming in.
In my opinion we need to target fans with no association with the university and act as if we were a school for the whole city. Miami is an exclusive private school full of students from the Northeast, but the city is always behind them. Plenty of my friends’ love watching the Coogs at Fertitta, some went to another university, and some didn’t even go to college but identify with the city of Houston. I don’t know how exactly to do this, but our alumni are apathetic to Cougar football, so why not go after transplants and blue-collar fans? I don’t even know if we can convince average fans to care since we’re not playing Michigan and LSU every week, but it’s worth a shot.
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Very well stated Gen. Z.
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No way the stadium is 62.5-75% full. Maybe the fullest sections in the lower bowl get there, but there are basically empty sections in the upper decks. 20k is an optimistic estimate of how many are in the stands at a typical home game.
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