Basketball Profits

[GoUNCA]

Clearly I am late to this party. As a recap:
1) King posted some interesting statistics and interesting accounting practices practiced by Big South and local schools
2) Something about what food players are fed
3) ktrain complains
4) king and alum respond, I think someone's mom was mentioned.
5) Something about some high school I'd never heard of before trying to slog my way through this thread. I must admit I got confused, but please, move on from high school. If only for this board.

Dear God. The players are being fed crappy food on a tight budget or choosing to eat crappy food. I'm all for the players eating healthy, but they probably wouldn't like be forced to eat it and we certainly aren't hiring a personal cook anytime soon. Now back to the interesting part.

The numbers. I can't decide if I am impressed or not. It could mean that we are doing a good job and that we accurately report things. Or it could mean we are cooking the books. I'll go with the former out of shear optimism, so it sounds good to me. UNCA has a lot of challenges to face, so we might as well be fiscally efficient when facing them.

Can anyone really explain Liberty's numbers? They averaged 2,674 per home game. I'm not a math genius but revenue of $2,655,264 looks a lot like $1000 per every attendee. Courtside season tickets only costs $300. There were 14 home games, so courtside seats (most valuable available) are roughly $21 a seat. Heck, let's assume all tickets sold are $25. That gives about $936,000. The only money games look to be Notre Dame and Northwestern. Even if they made $500,000 off money games, it leaves them with a little over a million dollars that has to be made up by booster and advertising support. Maybe that is possible with 2500 average attendance (and even that has non-paying students counted). Maybe a lot of little old southern baptist ladies are giving a percentage of their pension to the athletic department in an effort fend off gays and liberals, but I seriously doubt it. I doubt the whole thing.

Just to contrast this to UNC-Asheville...If everyone paid the over-inflated $25 that would give us $364,000 in ticket revenue (910 average attendance over 16 home games). We played twice as many money games (UK, Charlotte, UT, UGA). So let's say we made $200,000 out of those four games. That only puts us about $150,000 to make up in booster and advertising support.

Maybe I am being simplistic. And there are probably other revenue streams. But ours seems much more plausible to me.

[kingaling42]

I don't understand the figures for Liberty either- I will say that for LU, they have a TV contract (MASN) & TV/radio sports network (FSN) I'm sure that is pulling in some revenue- Clemson at home was also another chance of revenue (but also aided the yearly attendance average) I imagine the funds came from the gate minus whatever they had to share with Clemson..

I can't see how they raised that amount of money in terms of true basketball revenue- but with fund raising efforts up there- anything is possible.. I will say that if they spend that amount of money for those results each year- then that's truly a shame!

[GoUNCA]

The comparison between basketball revenues and profits is interesting, but not precise. That's because schools have latitude in their filings with the Department of Education in whether they attribute some expenses and revenues to a specific sport or a more general classification for their entire athletic department.

That would explain it. Private institutions have a lot more leeway in their reporting. It also allows Liberty to report all sports revenue. It also explains Charleston Southern's revenue.

[beachdog]

Food was good to me.