2017 financials

[gorabbits]

The NCAA has released the financials for athletics for 2017. SDSU spends only slightly more than USD, and probably less if you looked at the same sports. The distribution of sources of funds is very different. SDSU is much higher in ticket sales, contributions and rights and licensing whereas USD is much higher in institutional funds. Student fees are similar prec-capta. Of the top four FCS institutions on the list in ticket revenue, 3 are or will be in the Summit/MVFC.

Also interesting that James Madison spends about $48M versus $28M for NDSU. 81% of JMU's funds come student or institutional funds versus 24% for NDSU. SDSU is at 36% and USD 62% UNO spends more than either SDSU or USD thanks to hockey. However, even with Hockey UND only spins a little more than NDSU overall. The privates are not included in the report. The non Summit MVFC schools are in the same range as the Summit Football schools. Western Illinois has by far the lowest budget.

I forgot to include the link. Here it is.
sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

[kiyoat]

Cool. So Rabbit fans will spend over $4 million dollars next year watching their teams get railroaded by the Coyotes and Bison? You're welcome in advance! Yay!

[gorabbits]

Jun 29, 2018 16:54:30 GMT -6 kiyoat said:

Cool. So Rabbit fans will spend over $4 million dollars next year watching their teams get railroaded by the Coyotes and Bison? You're welcome in advance! Yay!

Just like last year Jacks and Coyotes we're pretty even any way you look at. But for the Bison and Jacks, in the major sports. MBB, WBB, Football, and Wrestling, the Jacks went 8 - 0.

[kiyoat]

Look, it's some interesting data, no doubt. But based on your posting on the "other" board I'd say it's fairly obvious that you brought this here to gloat over the large discrepancy in our gate revenue. I believe "pathetic" was the word you used.....

So let's call a spade a spade, shall we? In the words of my old landscape foreman: "don't piss on my boot and tell me it's raining".

USD's dip in gate between 2016 and 17 likely has something to do with all the extra games we got in that WNIT run in the spring of 06. The overall trend is up, despite being much lower than State.

I assume the construction of the new FB stadium has a lot to do with your large spike in gate. The "corporate sponsorship" of tickets at the NDSU game probably doesn't hurt, either.

I'll look a little closer at this data when I have time. Thanks for the link.

[gorabbits]

If you will reread my post, the word pathetic or any other negative term is no where to be found. In fact I pointed out that your overall support for athletics is higher than SDSU's on a per sport basis since USD does not have wrestling, baseball or equestrian to support. Someone on the SDSU board did use the word pathetic, but that was not me and not on this board. I posted the info on this board because I thought it pointed out the overall strength of the Summit/MVFC and particularly the Dakota schools. We are both getting to where we want to be in financial support, just achieving it in different ways.

[kiyoat]

I see. Sorry for making that false ASS-umption, then. I agree that the former NCC members of both the Summit and the MVFC are more financially solvent than the others. The fact that UNO shows well is a testament to the popularity of their hockey team, I think.

It's too bad UNI wouldn't consider the Summit. They are probably the strongest and most viable option for expansion. The NCAA tournament money would be hard to leave, though. Plus they just think they are better. We will just have to keep raising our profile in basketball to surpass the MVC. That probably means the Bison need to get their sh$t back together in that sport. Probably will happen.

[easmus]

The tickets numbers for us are encouraging. Continuing to get better in football will help and the attendance at SCSC will help if the basketball teams continue to be strong.

[yoteforever]

Jun 29, 2018 16:18:35 GMT -6 gorabbits said:

The NCAA has released the financials for athletics for 2017. SDSU spends only slightly more than USD, and probably less if you looked at the same sports. The distribution of sources of funds is very different. SDSU is much higher in ticket sales, contributions and rights and licensing whereas USD is much higher in institutional funds. Student fees are similar prec-capta. Of the top four FCS institutions on the list in ticket revenue, 3 are or will be in the Summit/MVFC.

Also interesting that James Madison spends about $48M versus $28M for NDSU. 81% of JMU's funds come student or institutional funds versus 24% for NDSU. SDSU is at 36% and USD 62% UNO spends more than either SDSU or USD thanks to hockey. However, even with Hockey UND only spins a little more than NDSU overall. The privates are not included in the report. The non Summit MVFC schools are in the same range as the Summit Football schools. Western Illinois has by far the lowest budget.

I forgot to include the link. Here it is.
sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

Looking at the numbers reported in this article, and comparing SDSU’s numbers with other schools outside the Power5 they, along with NDSU had reported ticket revenue way and beyond numbers of other institutions. Their numbers were far greater than all MAC schools, most AAC schools, and certainly more than other FCS schools. My first thought was...”wow, kudos to them for getting it done”.

Then I started thinking about it more and decided to look into it deeper. This is what I found and you can draw your own conclusions.

Starting with football, I went to their website and looked at their reported attendance numbers. For 6 games ( not counting playoffs ) the total reported attendance was 82,850. From that number, a certain percent were students that don’t pay for season tickets. For illustrations, I said 10% of the attendance were students. Might be higher, might be lower, but certainly close enough for this. Then I went to 2018 season ticket prices and came up with the following. They have a couple different levels of pricing that depends on seat location. But using 75% of the tickets being sold at the highest number, the average ticket price came in at $27/ticket.

Then I went to men’s and women’s basketball. The men had a reported attendance for last year totaling 30,119 and the women come in at 31,937. They also sell season tickets that the price is for both men’s and women’s. That average comes in at $10.56/ticket. Assuming student attendance is 15% of total, that means there 52,750 tickets sold at $10.56 each.

Review:

Football 82,850 x 90% x $27 = 2,013,255
Basketball 61,516 x 85% x $10.56 = 552,167

Total potential revenue of reported attendance numbers times actual ticket prices = $ 2,565,422

POSSIBLE ADDITIONS: SDSU hosted (2) NCAA football playoff games that totaled $13,101 reported fans. However, the NCAA gets the ticket revenue less a fee to host school for stadium use. Even if they got ALL the money, and the average price was $40 ( I don’t think it’s that high ) that would’ve resulted in roughly $525,000 in ticket sales

2nd possible addition is seating “lease rights” that season ticket holders have to pay for the benefit of sitting in the cold and freezing your ass off every season to help defray the cost of the stadium. But IN MY OPINION WOULD NOT BE TICKET INCOME.

So if you add the absolute best possible outcome of reported attendance times average cost per ticket that would total $2,565,422. However, in that report,they say they have $4,600,000+ in ticket revenue. Now unless volleyball, wrestling, and equine attendance is off the charts, where does that $2,000,000 difference come from?

Something is not reported the same. Plus, there is a stadium tax of $2/game for revenue to payoff the estimated $39+ million in bonds taken out to attempt to pay for the stadium. That’s another topic for another day.

I close with this. If your actual numbers are $2.5M that’s still very good in my opinion. We should strive for that. However, as you are aware of, many SDSU posters blast our administration saying we fudge numbers. You want fudge? Dive into your own numbers.

[dave]

Just a quick reply regarding SDSU revenue as I have to get going. FWIW your basketball ticket price is a little low while season tickets may average $10.50 GA tickets IIRC are around $20. The premium price paid for the football premium seating is substantial, and wrestling averaged IIRC around 2000 I think tickets are in the $20 range. Also keep in mind if SDSU reports actual people is seats attendance rather than tickets sold simply dividing revenue by attendance will skew the figures as a number of season ticket holders don't come to every game, so there are more walk up single game purchasers. In other words there are more tickets sold to the game than there are people attending.

[GoYotes]

I think you nailed it Yoteforever. SDSU is using donations / "lease rights" to Joose their ticket revenues. The 4 million plus ticket revenues don't pass the smell test. If you want to learn about the smell test, make plans to attend the Manure Expo in Brookings on August 15 & 16.

My guess is that actual ticket revenues are in the 2.0 to 2.5 million range, which is still very impressive. SDSU has did a great job of utilizing their new stadium and on the field success to turn regular season football games into an event.

[kiyoat]

www.sdbor.edu/administrative-offices/finance-administration/annual-reports/Pages/Athletic-Funding-Reports.aspx

I'm not well versed on finance, but here is the SD BOR athletic funding reports for the last few years. I think there is a lot more detail to the itemization of funds and costs vs. that USA Today report. Maybe it will shed more light on the subject, if people have specific questions.

Some interesting things (not about gate reporting):
1. SDSU shows $1.5 mil income from corporate sponsorships, and USD has zero. That's interesting that we don't have any corporate sponsors.
2. SDSU gets an NCAA payout of $2.4 mil, USD gets 1.7 -- obviously the Summit League doesn't believe in equal disbursement.
3. SDSU gets $300K in interest from some kind of endowment. Despite the fact that USD's overall endowment is much larger, we must not have any that are set up to specifically support athletics.

[dave]

If you look at the BOR financial reports and compare FY 16 to 17 for SDSU you will see a jump in gate receipts from 2.7 million to 4.3, my guess the majority of that increase is coming from the new football stadium, mainly the premium paid for the premium seating. Regarding the difference in NCAA payouts IIRC the NCAA pays the shares for men's basketball out over something like seven years, (I can't remember that exact number of years). You don't start receiving shares until you are tournament eligible, so you guys are at something like year five of eligibility so in a couple of years you'll be at a full share, I think, I could be completely wrong on that. The other reason for the discrepancy may be due to our NCAA baseball appearance a few years back, or our football playoff games, but once again I don't know if there is an NCAA payout in either of those sports.

[gorabbits]

If you want to see where the extra funds from ticket sales come from, go to the following site and click on the links to the cost for the various suties, up to $45,000 per year depending on length of contract. There are also, I would estimate 1000 club seats that go for $750 a year. From observing when attending, these are sold out or very close.

danajdykhousestadium.com/seating/executivesuites/

As to other sports, wrestling did top $100,000 in ticket sales last year for the first time. For basketball, SDSU is approaching 2000 season tickets sold according to their seating diagram. The average cost is about $375, which is what I pay for upper level seats. That would come to $750,000. With individual ticket sales, that would probably approach $1 million.

But the real point is that neither the NCAA or the SDBOR would allow an institution to report inflated numbers and you have to have the income to support the expenses.

There may be small differences in how the numbers are reported but overall they are accurate. For example, we pay a licensing fee to buy season tickets. For me it is $250 for each football seat and $50 for each basketball seat for season tickets. I think this is counted under donation as it comes out of my Jackrabbit Club fund account which is deposited with the foundation. If counted under ticket sales the totals would undoubtedly total more than the ticket sales reported but in either case is tied to ticket sales.

As I said in an earlier post, both SDSU and USD are doing a very good job of growing their athletic budget, they have just taken different approaches to doing so. Fortunately, both ways seem to be working.

[jackjd]

Jul 2, 2018 11:26:39 GMT -6 yoteforever said:

>...the estimated $39+ million in bonds taken out to attempt to pay for the stadium. That’s another topic for another day.

The bonded indebtedness for SDSU's stadium was a little less than $34 million. See the Audited Financial Reports of the SD Building Authority ("SDBA"). www.sd-ba.com/documents.htm The most recent Annual Report posted for the SDBA is the 2017 Report. At the back of the report is a summary of the bonds sold going back to 1969. The SDSU stadium bonding was part of the Series 2014A bonds sold by the SDBA.

No need to speculate on the numbers...the information relative to athletics revenue and expenses at the public universities in South Dakota is a matter of public record. It may take one a little time to dig it up but it's available at various government sites including the SD Board of Regents site and the SDBA site. I happen to be familiar with the activities of the SD Building Authority so it didn't take much to go to that site for the information on bonded projects (including bonded indebtedness for USD athletic facilities).

[kiyoat]

Jul 2, 2018 15:20:13 GMT -6 dave said:

If you look at the BOR financial reports and compare FY 16 to 17 for SDSU you will see a jump in gate receipts from 2.7 million to 4.3, my guess the majority of that increase is coming from the new football stadium, mainly the premium paid for the premium seating. Regarding the difference in NCAA payouts IIRC the NCAA pays the shares for men's basketball out over something like seven years, (I can't remember that exact number of years). You don't start receiving shares until you are tournament eligible, so you guys are at something like year five of eligibility so in a couple of years you'll be at a full share, I think, I could be completely wrong on that. The other reason for the discrepancy may be due to our NCAA baseball appearance a few years back, or our football playoff games, but once again I don't know if there is an NCAA payout in either of those sports.

The MBB Tournament is the only NCAA event that makes enough money to have disbursement payments. Each year's payout is disbursed over 6 years, but payments overlap. The key point here is that the disbursements go to conferences, not individual schools. Each conference has full control over how they distribute to member schools. Some divvy it equally, some don't. The Summit obviously doesn't. I'd be curious to see the reason.