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huskiealum03 Wrote:

Huskiefan38 Wrote:I think its funny how 3 years ago everyone on this board was whining about when we will ever get to play at soldier field, and now everyone is whining that we are, im confused.

its good as a once in a while scenario....but when the next "big team" with a chance of actually going to dekalb gets sent to SF, thats appalling.

ding, ding, ding. I'll be out of this place in a year and I'll be able to afford trips to Solider Field to watch the Huskies. But just once I would have like to see a big time opponent at Huskie Stadium. Let's just say the football atmosphere I was expecting upon my arrival at NIU was much less than expected.

while Nigel Incubator is correct that NIU should cater to alumnus, at the same time, the Nigel Incubators of the world are already established with NIU. The Nigel Incubators are already proven as donors through thick or thin. But how does an NIU want to grow their program? You have to do that by making football a memorable experience for the STUDENTS. This is how you grow your fanbase. I've said this way before this soldier field discussion. if you successfully market to the students, they will grow into donating, season ticket holding graduates of NIU. Going to soldier field will not suck in Average Joe 6 pack from Chicago. Most chicagoans-even non-diehard NIU alums in the area will not give 2 craps if NIU is at soldier field.

Although i saw football games from 98-2003, i didn't really get sucked in until NIU played a ranked BGSU in 2002, and Maryland in 2003. I guarantee i would not have gone to a game at soldier field as a student, because quite frankly, thats just too much effort for an NIU student. Trash that statement all you want, but its the truth. Most NIU students won't put in the money or time to go to soldier field. Thats just the way the culture is with NIU. Soldier field is a nice pay day for sure, but it won't "grow" the fanbase any more than rolling the dice with trying to bring in even marginally better teams to Huskie Stadium.... i'm not talking about bringing in a 1-AA team either unless it is SIU, or any other state school where students may have friends they can bring up.

I am sure many of the people that have complained in the past that we need to pay our assistant coaches more to retain them, are now complaining about playing at SF for a bigger payday. We can't have it both ways folks. We don't even sell out for all home games, if ever, which would maximize our revenue at home. Sure, in a perfect world, I would love to see Big 10 schools playing in Huskie Stadium, but considering the financial success of the Iowa game, it would be rediculous to play the Wisconsin game at Huskie Stadium especially with how well Wiscy fans travel.

Field Turf Wrote:I am sure many of the people that have complained in the past that we need to pay our assistant coaches more to retain them, are now complaining about playing at SF for a bigger payday.. We can't have it both ways folks. We don't even sell out for all home games, if ever, which would maximize our revenue at home. Sure, in a perfect world, I would love to see Big 10 schools playing in Huskie Stadium, but considering the financial success of the Iowa game, it would be rediculous to play the Wisconsin game at Huskie Stadium especially with how well Wiscy fans travel.

There is nothing to prove its a bigger payday.
There are 28,000 seats at HS
5,000 student tickets X $20 = $100,000 and 23,000 regular tickets x $50 = $1,150,000. If you can't/won't charge students make the regular seats $55 = $1,265,000. UW took 350K to go to FSU which will cost them a lot more than coming to DeKalb eating up part of that $350K. Give them $400K to come to HS. That leaves NIU with a revenue stream of $865K before parking, concessions, and merchandising. Assume you guarantee UW 2000 tickets for the game and a high season ticket base of 11,000 tickets (which I believe is way high for NIU), that leaves 10,000 general public seats. Require that every non season ticket holder, student or UW guarantee ticket (10000 in this case) must buy one other ticket to a different game at the normal $20/game cost, that is an additional 200k in revenue. That means NIU gets $1,065,000 in revenue. It was reported that the NIU Iowa game the revenue was split 50/50 with each team getting around 1 million. Why bend over and take it from UW just to give them and extra 600K when playing at HS makes NIU the same $$$ as playing at SF in this scenario.

Assuming the ST base is lower than 11,000 tickets that just raises the additional revenue by $20 for each seat less than that 11K.

1) tickets reserved for students need to be done far in advance of general release - if this plan were to be workable.

2) Highly unlikely 5,000 NIU students would pony up -----& actually much closer to the 8,000 who normally expect to attend games for "free" -which is a part of their overall fee structure.

3) One time "Gouging" of others would not fly well with substantial number of those in nonstudent fan base.

you can do all the Huskie stadium calculations you want this game played at SF is a bonanza for both teams. UW would make over a mill and I hear the deal we cut will be substantially higher then the Iowa game. If an AD did not do this game at SF he would be malfeasent. Moving this game to SF is a no brainer. Additionally, I would make the UW game at SF part of the season ticket package. You cannot pass up that kind of revenue.me

cyberdawg Wrote:1) tickets reserved for students need to be done far in advance of general release - if this plan were to be workable.

2) Highly unlikely 5,000 NIU students would pony up -----& actually much closer to the 8,000 who normally expect to attend games for "free" -which is a part of their overall fee structure.

3) One time "Gouging" of others would not fly well with substantial number of those in nonstudent fan base.

for every student ticket not sold at $20 you sell it for $50 to the GP with the extra game attached and increase the revenue further. The one time gouging happened when they move the game to SF so that's already a non issue. If the extra ticket thing wont fly you might make 200K less on the game but is the goodwill worth more than 200K? I'd say yes, considering it can result in increased donation, plus parking concessions, and merchandise that will not happen at SF.

How do you tell students you have NO rights to a ticket thru your fees paid & that you have no ticket to the game - unless you buy one at a much higher price than regular seats sold in years past?

cyberdawg Wrote:1) tickets reserved for students need to be done far in advance of general release - if this plan were to be workable.

2) Highly unlikely 5,000 NIU students would pony up -----& actually much closer to the 8,000 who normally expect to attend games for "free" -which is a part of their overall fee structure.

3) One time "Gouging" of others would not fly well with substantial number of those in nonstudent fan base.

What are you talking about "Gouging" ?

Big 11 Schools charge this much all the time and all of professional sports are charging more for big time games. It's happening in the MLB, NFL, and NHL.

I would be glad to pay $50 and have a NIU crowd at Huskie Stadium. As I said before - until NIU, and other MAC schools, can get a handle on getting tickets in NIU fans hands for games at SF before the opponent - it shouldn't be done.

cyberdawg Wrote:How do you tell students you have NO rights to a ticket thru your fees paid & that you have no ticket to the game - unless you buy one at a much higher price than regular seats sold in years past?

I don't know, how did they do it for SF last time? How do they do it for a MAC tourney, which are *not* free games for students. And if you read what I wrote initially I said if you don't want to, can't charge the students make the regular tix 55, which more than offsets the student ticket cost. a move from 50 to $54.35 would make it an even exchange.

cyberdawg Wrote:1) tickets reserved for students need to be done far in advance of general release - if this plan were to be workable.

2) Highly unlikely 5,000 NIU students would pony up -----& actually much closer to the 8,000 who normally expect to attend games for "free" -which is a part of their overall fee structure.

3) One time "Gouging" of others would not fly well with substantial number of those in nonstudent fan base.

from people who used to work in the athletics office, they allot 6000 for students, if you aren't in the first 6000 you don't get in free. Remember 2003, instead of flashing your ID you had to get tickets in advance and when they were gone you had to buy one even as a student.

gouging is a relative term.

If you are watching BT teams play one another regularly, you expect to pay BT rates.

I LOVE that NIU is playing Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Great venue against one of the nation's best programs that will deliver a big payday for NIU. I could care less that Soldier Field will be dominated by Badger fans.

One more thing. To all you whining sniveling clods might I suggest to you that one game at Soldier Field every two years hardly qualifies for NIU selling its soul to the Big 10.

Nigel Incubator-Jones Wrote:I LOVE that NIU is playing Wisconsin at Soldier Field. Great venue against one of the nation's best programs that will deliver a big payday for NIU. I could care less that Soldier Field will be dominated by Badger fans.

One more thing. To all you whining sniveling clods might I suggest to you that one game at Soldier Field every two years hardly qualifies for NIU selling its soul to the Big 10.

but it's been pretty well established you're an idiot.
The payday at SF is not much different than charging the same prices at HS.

calvin12 Wrote:There is nothing to prove its a bigger payday.
There are 28,000 seats at HS
5,000 student tickets X $20 = $100,000 and 23,000 regular tickets x $50 = $1,150,000. If you can't/won't charge students make the regular seats $55 = $1,265,000. UW took 350K to go to FSU which will cost them a lot more than coming to DeKalb eating up part of that $350K. Give them $400K to come to HS. That leaves NIU with a revenue stream of $865K before parking, concessions, and merchandising. Assume you guarantee UW 2000 tickets for the game and a high season ticket base of 11,000 tickets (which I believe is way high for NIU), that leaves 10,000 general public seats. Require that every non season ticket holder, student or UW guarantee ticket (10000 in this case) must buy one other ticket to a different game at the normal $20/game cost, that is an additional 200k in revenue. That means NIU gets $1,065,000 in revenue. It was reported that the NIU Iowa game the revenue was split 50/50 with each team getting around 1 million. Why bend over and take it from UW just to give them and extra 600K when playing at HS makes NIU the same $$$ as playing at SF in this scenario.

Assuming the ST base is lower than 11,000 tickets that just raises the additional revenue by $20 for each seat less than that 11K.

Some points on this:
1) You'd basically end up with 10,000 seats that cost $70-$75 ($50-$55 for the UW game plus the $20). I have to be honest; I don't think that's reasonable. A ticket to the 2008 Capital One Bowl between Florida and Michigan, played in Florida, was $75. The diehards that would be willing to pay that probably already have season tickets.

2) I would imagine the idea that you discussed has been talked about in the athletic department and my guess is that they came to the conclusion that it's not as feasible as you make it sound. I am not convinced you could average $50/ticket for that game. That's higher than a lot of Big Ten programs would average per ticket at one of their games.

3) Here's a direct quote from Philips on a Soldier Field game shortly after:
“I don’t know [the exact amount], but I think it’s going to be in the seven figures,” Phillips said of the revenue from the game. “What was generated out of this one game at Solider Field we can’t do in a year at Huskie Stadium.”

4) IIRC, the $1 million was the net figure for NIU, not the revenue figure. The quote above was from an article that indicated that NIU netted 7 figures from the deal. The math would seem to work:
65,000 seats x $40 (roughly; probably slightly low) per seat is $2.6 million in revenues. $600k to rent SF leaves $2 million to split with Iowa. I think the actual net figure was $1.1 million, so the average ticket price may have been a little higher.

5) There aren't 28,000 seats at Huskie Stadium. There are 25,500 according to the Media Guide.

UIHuskie Wrote:5) There aren't 28,000 seats at Huskie Stadium. There are 24,500 according to the Media Guide.

Yes, but we've fit 28,000 in today's current configuration at games. The students pack in like sardines on the East side.

UIHuskie Wrote:

calvin12 Wrote:There is nothing to prove its a bigger payday.
There are 28,000 seats at HS
5,000 student tickets X $20 = $100,000 and 23,000 regular tickets x $50 = $1,150,000. If you can't/won't charge students make the regular seats $55 = $1,265,000. UW took 350K to go to FSU which will cost them a lot more than coming to DeKalb eating up part of that $350K. Give them $400K to come to HS. That leaves NIU with a revenue stream of $865K before parking, concessions, and merchandising. Assume you guarantee UW 2000 tickets for the game and a high season ticket base of 11,000 tickets (which I believe is way high for NIU), that leaves 10,000 general public seats. Require that every non season ticket holder, student or UW guarantee ticket (10000 in this case) must buy one other ticket to a different game at the normal $20/game cost, that is an additional 200k in revenue. That means NIU gets $1,065,000 in revenue. It was reported that the NIU Iowa game the revenue was split 50/50 with each team getting around 1 million. Why bend over and take it from UW just to give them and extra 600K when playing at HS makes NIU the same $$$ as playing at SF in this scenario.

Assuming the ST base is lower than 11,000 tickets that just raises the additional revenue by $20 for each seat less than that 11K.

Some points on this:
1) You'd basically end up with 10,000 seats that cost $70-$75 ($50-$55 for the UW game plus the $20). I have to be honest; I don't think that's reasonable. A ticket to the 2008 Capital One Bowl between Florida and Michigan, played in Florida, was $75. The diehards that would be willing to pay that probably already have season tickets.

2) I would imagine the idea that you discussed has been talked about in the athletic department and my guess is that they came to the conclusion that it's not as feasible as you make it sound. I am not convinced you could average $50/ticket for that game. That's higher than a lot of Big Ten programs would average per ticket at one of their games.

3) Here's a direct quote from Philips on a Soldier Field game shortly after:
“I don’t know [the exact amount], but I think it’s going to be in the seven figures,” Phillips said of the revenue from the game. “What was generated out of this one game at Solider Field we can’t do in a year at Huskie Stadium.”

4) IIRC, the $1 million was the net figure for NIU, not the revenue figure. The quote above was from an article that indicated that NIU netted 7 figures from the deal. The math would seem to work:
65,000 seats x $40 (roughly; probably slightly low) per seat is $2.6 million in revenues. $600k to rent SF leaves $2 million to split with Iowa. I think the actual net figure was $1.1 million, so the average ticket price may have been a little higher.

5) There aren't 28,000 seats at Huskie Stadium. There are 25,500 according to the Media Guide.

on #2, how do you not average $50/seat at HS, thats what it cost at SF. The history for that price is there, and in this case it would be a limited supply making that price even easier to justify. Following the numbers in the earlier post NIU has revenue of over 1.4M for the game, and pays UW 400k, leaving a net (not including HS overhead) of about 1M, and lower costs for NIU, no travel costs.

on #3 JP was righ,t NIU can't get that much revenue from HS, but you don't guarantee a 50/50 split and you can make almost as much profit. You don't have any reason to pay UW 1M, they just this year have shown a willingness to go across county with higher expenses for just 350K. If UW had not agreed to play at HS, I wouldn't be as bothered by this, but the fact is they did agree and should be held to it.

epasnoopy Wrote:Yes, but we've fit 28,000 in today's current configuration at games. The students pack in like sardines on the East side.

Understood, but there are a fixed number of seats you could even attempt to sell for $50 or $55 apiece, and they aren't the ones that would be occupied by the students packing in.

epasnoopy Wrote:

UIHuskie Wrote:5) There aren't 28,000 seats at Huskie Stadium. There are 24,500 according to the Media Guide.

Yes, but we've fit 28,000 in today's current configuration at games. The students pack in like sardines on the East side.

no one seems to know the capacity of HS. We have over 28K in the current confg. The website says 28K, the media guide says 25.5K, this weeks game notes say 24k.

calvin12 Wrote:on #2 how do you not average $50/seat at HS, thats what it cost at SF. The history for that price is there, and in this case it would be a limited supply making that price even easier to do. Following the numbers in teh earlier post NIU has revenue of 1.4M for the game, and pays UW 400 leaving a net (not including HS overhead) of about 1M.

on #3 JP was right NIU can't get that much revenue from HS, but you don't guarantee a 50/50 split and you can make almost as much profit. You don't have any reason to pay UW 1M, they just this year have shown a willingness to go across county with higher expenses for just 350K. If UW had not agreed to play at HS, I wouldn't be as bothered by this, but the fact is they did agree and should be held to it.

Here:
25,500 seats per media guide; we'll say you can cram 2,500 more students in to get to 28,000 with a technical original student capacity of 5,000.

20,500 regular seats x $55 per seat: $1,127,500
First 6,000 students (I'll assume that your earlier comment on this was right): $0
Final 2,000 students...let's use $20 per: $40,000

Total revenues: $1,1675,000
Average per seat at 28,000: $41.69

All of that is before the guarantee payment is made to Wisconsin and any overhead/operating expenses are accounted for.

The issue is you have a large group of students that aren't going to be paying anywhere near $50/per seat. Not even close. And, IIRC, they didn't get that break in the Soldier Field game. If they did, feel free to correct me since I don't really know since I wasn't there. That same group also likely represents a higher percent of those actually at the game (8/28 = 29% in HS) than they probably did at the Soldier Field game, making it even harder to make up the difference.

I do think you could get more per ticket (obviously) than NIU does for a regular game, but I don't think you could get to an average of $50 per seat for 28,000 seats.

Maybe you are right, but as I mentioned, I would think somebody in the athletic department has done the math like you and I have tried to do, has a much better sense of what the real numbers would be, and didn't think it could reasonably compete from a financial standpoint to a Soldier Field game.