(07-29-2019 01:14 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(07-29-2019 01:00 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-29-2019 12:53 PM)Wedge Wrote:  The downside to selling your bowl to ESPN is that once ESPN owns it, they can move it to another city or state, as they did in moving the "Miami Beach Bowl" to Frisco, Texas.

Seems like that would be a significant risk with the I-Bowl.

Thats true---but its worth noting the Miami Beach Bowl was a start up with no real history and poor sales. That said, I still question if the Miami game could have been fixed by simply giving it a better kickoff day and time (not a weekday several days prior to Christmas--which was a workday for most---at 2pm in the afternoon). They gave it a much better date and time when it was moved to Frisco. The only thing I can figure is there were able to gain some economies of scale by moving the game to a Metroplex where they already have 2 other bowls.

Yes, I'm assuming that ESPN moved the game to Frisco to cut costs. Part of that was probably being able to rent the Frisco stadium at a very low price. And, if that move is part of a pattern of clustering ESPN bowls in an area to make it easier for one group of employees to administer multiple bowl games, then places where ESPN already owns one bowl game and could easily add another include Houston, Las Vegas, and Tampa.

At the very least that would give ESPN enormous leverage over Shreveport if ESPN bought the I-Bowl. They could say, we have to cut costs, we need you to let us use the stadium rent free, and also provide other local services to the bowl at no cost to ESPN Events... if you want the game to remain in Shreveport.

On the flip side, Shreveport is reasonably close to Dallas and not that bad of a distance from Houston.

Shreveport has a wide open calendar and could easily handle ESPN Events Independence Bowl and the ESPN Events Red River Bowl (formerly Frisco or the game at Cotton Bowl that the city refused to underwrite).

EDIT
Just remembered that Louisiana has a tax pool that the bowls get to dip into. NOLA, Sugar and Indy all get some money. ESPN might really be inclined to double up in Shreveport. With Arkansas adding casinos business is getting tougher for Shreveport.