$200: the final straw for this Gopher alum & lifelong fan

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Panthadad2 said:
Minnesota at least holds its own in football revenues but is getting outclassed in pretty much every other revenue category per EADA data.

Other schools somehow bring in multiple millions in most "non-revenue" sports whereas MN only tops $1M in hockey and volleyball. Donations? Accounting differences?

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Bold has to explain it.

Guessing Minnesota (and most schools?) are putting at least 90% of the check that comes from the Big Ten into "Football revenue". Which isn't wrong by any means ... it's money that mostly comes from the conference TV deal (mostly football), CFP TV deal, and bowl games.


And obviously we aren't matching Iowa/Neb/Wisc in football ticket revenue (or I would shocked if we were somehow doing it ... via higher prices?). And does the athletic department even get to claim money related to football gameday parking and stadium concessions??
 

Burns said recently on a podcast that Iowa & WI pull in about 70 million per year in football from ticket sales and NIL vs. MN at round 45 million. That is a huge hill to climb and probably never will because of all the pro sports competition the Gophers have.
 

PMWinSTP said:
A little apples to oranges...as has been pointed out numerous times, those all are the big sports attractions in town, to the extreme for Iowa and Nebby since there is no pro football or basketball in the entire state.
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Agree 100% that will always be a thorn in our side, but we still have to figure out a way to make up the difference somehow (not saying that you were claiming we didn't have to try, or anything like that)
 

That's obviously the other thing we can do, is try to save money as opposed to generate new revenue.

For example, cutting baseball.
 


SeaBee_Gopher said:
Burns said recently on a podcast that Iowa & WI pull in about 70 million per year in football from ticket sales and NIL vs. MN at round 45 million. That is a huge hill to climb and probably never will because of all the pro sports competition the Gophers have.
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22000 (difference in our attendance vs iowa in 2024)*50(lowest ticket price for conf is 70, non con is 30)*7 (home games) and just this amount is a rapid 7.7mil for stadium size/capacity in terms of immediate revenue (plus add concessions/sales, etc). The numbers vs WI are even worse with them averaging about 30k more fans.

Obviously they sell many tickets for more than that but you're immediately getting smacked just in terms of capacity differences off the get go. If those tickets average say 100, you're not going to compete from that difference in revenue stream over the long haul unless you make up for a ton elsewhere in terms of donations.
 

upnorthkid said:
22000 (difference in our attendance vs iowa in 2024)*50(lowest ticket price for conf is 70, non con is 30)*7 (home games) and just this amount is a rapid 7.7mil for stadium size/capacity in terms of immediate revenue (plus add concessions/sales, etc). The numbers vs WI are even worse with them averaging about 30k more fans.

Obviously they sell many tickets for more than that but you're immediately getting smacked just in terms of capacity differences off the get go. If those tickets average say 100, you're not going to compete from that difference in revenue stream over the long haul unless you make up for a ton elsewhere in terms of donations.
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Good points on the math. I suppose this just illustrates you can't please everyone when you don't have enough to go around.
 

Word said:
Your Hawkeyes are the only game in the state of Iowa. It's just a different situation. Don't want to rehash the attendance argument though. Even the Twins and Timberwolves have ticket promotions. T-wolves actually gave me free tickets last year for 1 game and $10 tickets for another.
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That's a loser's mentality. There are more people in the metro than the entire state of Iowa and nearly twice as many than the entire state of Nebraska, and Iowa City and Lincoln are in cities a mere fraction of the size of the metro. Big league sports competition had no effect on MBB attendance or ticket demand when MBB was competitive and relevant.
 

swede2 said:
That's a loser's mentality. There are more people in the metro than the entire state of Iowa and nearly twice as many than the entire state of Nebraska, and Iowa City and Lincoln are in cities a mere fraction of the size of the metro. Big league sports competition had no effect on MBB attendance or ticket demand when MBB was competitive and relevant.
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The counter to this is that, in Lincoln, even though they are a mere fraction of our size as you say, is that 99.9% of the people there care about Nebraska football.

Our population doesn't scale nearly that well, so even though we have a lot more people, we probably have less overall Gopher fans than they do Husker fans.

...and that's before getting into the details of all the things you can spend money on here that they don't have to consider.

As for the men's bb comment, even if we have a team we think can make the Elite 8, you're still talking about getting 15,000 or so fans to a game. Plus, and I'm not gonna look it up, but how were the wolves doing at the time we packed our bb arena? Right now the vikes are pretty hot and getting lots of attention.
 



GopherTheJugular said:
The counter to this is that, in Lincoln, even though they are a mere fraction of our size as you say, is that 99.9% of the people there care about Nebraska football.

Our population doesn't scale nearly that well, so even though we have a lot more people, we probably have less overall Gopher fans than they do Husker fans.

...and that's before getting into the details of all the things you can spend money on here that they don't have to consider.

As for the men's bb comment, even if we have a team we think can make the Elite 8, you're still talking about getting 15,000 or so fans to a game. Plus, and I'm not gonna look it up, but how were the wolves doing at the time we packed our bb arena? Right now the vikes are pretty hot and getting lots of attention.
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I don't mean to imply that having big league sports in town doesn't have some effect on the interest in Gopher sports but I think the bigger issue is that our teams are largely irrelevant. The reality, though, is that even where there isn't in town competition, irrelevancy begets empty stadiums and arenas and winning and relevancy fills the same. We don't sell out our small stadium because we haven't been relevant during most of our lifetimes. We used to sell out the barn during most of our lifetimes because we were relevant. Hockey is relevant nationally and sells out 3M, recent attendance issues duly noted. People love a winner and even if not a winner, they are at least optimistic and have the hope of a winner and relevancy. If we had consistent winners and the fans believed our teams could be relevant, they would show up. The same mindset applied to the big leagues (the NFL might be the outlier although I'm old enough to remember a few Sunday blackouts and Sid Hartman appealing to the business community to buy up blocks of tickets at a discount). Look no further than the ghost town at Target Field. But I doubt too many of those fans are taking their entertainment dollars down the street and taking in a spoken word event at the Orpheum.
 

swede2 said:
That's a loser's mentality. There are more people in the metro than the entire state of Iowa and nearly twice as many than the entire state of Nebraska, and Iowa City and Lincoln are in cities a mere fraction of the size of the metro. Big league sports competition had no effect on MBB attendance or ticket demand when MBB was competitive and relevant.
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It's easy to draw when you're good. The difference is when you're not. People won't pay good $$ for bad product when they have other choices. Nebraska football can suck for 20 years and they'll still sell out every game. Iowa is nearly the same.
 

SeaBee_Gopher said:
Burns said recently on a podcast that Iowa & WI pull in about 70 million per year in football from ticket sales and NIL vs. MN at round 45 million. That is a huge hill to climb and probably never will because of all the pro sports competition the Gophers have.
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This town just needs a few more 2019 seasons.
We are starved for winners here. If you win, the fans will come. 8 win seasons are just not enough to win the city over in a meaningful way.

The Wolves show that if you contend, you will fill the arena fast, even if you have historically been an also-ran in the market.
 

Mr. 131 said:
This town just needs a few more 2019 seasons.
We are starved for winners here. If you win, the fans will come. 8 win seasons are just not enough to win the city over in a meaningful way.

The Wolves show that if you contend, you will fill the arena fast, even if you have historically been an also-ran in the market.
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Yet even the Wolves gave me free tickets this past season. Attendance is definitely better though.
 



swede2 said:
I don't mean to imply that having big league sports in town doesn't have some effect on the interest in Gopher sports but I think the bigger issue is that our teams are largely irrelevant. The reality, though, is that even where there isn't in town competition, irrelevancy begets empty stadiums and arenas and winning and relevancy fills the same. We don't sell out our small stadium because we haven't been relevant during most of our lifetimes. We used to sell out the barn during most of our lifetimes because we were relevant. Hockey is relevant nationally and sells out 3M, recent attendance issues duly noted. People love a winner and even if not a winner, they are at least optimistic and have the hope of a winner and relevancy. If we had consistent winners and the fans believed our teams could be relevant, they would show up. The same mindset applied to the big leagues (the NFL might be the outlier although I'm old enough to remember a few Sunday blackouts and Sid Hartman appealing to the business community to buy up blocks of tickets at a discount). Look no further than the ghost town at Target Field. But I doubt too many of those fans are taking their entertainment dollars down the street and taking in a spoken word event at the Orpheum.
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Haven't been to the Orpheum, but I'm a Twins season ticket holder and have been dumping my Twins tickets and going to more MN United games. Lots of options of where to spend my money.
 


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