RE: The Future of TU Facilties? A rabidTU2 Suggestion.
I have a simple metric on stadium size that can be used to determine how much seating a stadium needs. Its a general numeric and simply understood cap I use that gauges ideal on-campus stadium capacity and whether a stadium meets the needs of the students, campus community and citizens in the community. To keep it simple it is ----- undergrad enrollment/minus stadium capacity/equals potential revenue. Potential revenue is what should be used to determine the size of the stadium in the first place and whether the future revenue can be had from it.
Let me begin by giving a couple of examples of this metric using a few schools we are somewhat familiar with. Source is Phill Steeles CFB Magazine.
School--------------------------Enrollment(undergrad)------------------Stadium Cap---------------Difference
Kansas St--------------------------20,169-----------------------------------50,000--------------------29,831 (empties)
Kansas-----------------------------19,217-----------------------------------50,071--------------------30,854
UCF--------------------------------51,333------------------------------------45,323--------(negative--6,010
Cincinnati -------------------------23,706------------------------------------40,000--------------------16,294
Tulsa -------------------------------3,428-------------------------------------30,000--------------------26,574
So as we can see there is quite a bit of variance in the figures and its obvious that enrollment plays a part in the size of the venue. However, if you look at that in real terms, students do not provide the amount of revenue the typical non-student paying customer does and that means a great deal to the viability of the programs. Some folks assume TU with its very small enrollment would never be able to keep up and there is merit to that POV, but in reality TU has never been dependent on the students for its funding. But neither do those other schools listed above. Revenue is normally derived from paying customers who visit campus on game day. So given that, it becomes imperative that those "visitors" need to be coddled so to speak and given every convenience to visit again and again. That includes good parking, comfort and a great experience on game day.
Back on point. So how big are we talking about here? Well, looking at some of the examples I listed, its obvious we don't really need a 50,000 seat venue, but we should have enough non-student capacity that provides the programs the revenue to sustain them.
So I think the cap number we now have is close to what we need, but not necessarily the convenience and comfort. So my strategy is to add comfort/convenience to the stadium with as much seating as possible that enhances the experience and makes the most revenue. We also need a stadium that allows us to occasionally schedule a game with an opponent that may be slightly above our pay grade. A game we wouldn't have to disadvantage our fans with a huge bump in ticket price. That is where I think having those premium seats, suites and boxes make up the difference. It allows us to go to a Tulsa area business and sell them tickets they won't necessarily use every home game, but as a way of donating to TU and guaranteeing a seat for the OU, OSU, Texas A@M or Baylor game. That is the strategy and the plan.
Building boxes and premium seating is initially expensive, but again won't be cost prohibitive because of the smaller understructure required - money that a lot of other schools just throw away as a necessary evil. And if TU just wanted to go economical and build a south endzone facility like USM, it wouldn't be too expensive by building it "on the hill" along 11th street and "ole histroric route 66".
More Later.
Source - Phil Steeles CFB Magazine (2015)
(This post was last modified: 04-29-2016 11:20 AM by rabidTU2.)
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