It’s bowl season, and that means along with the trick plays, loud bands and Brent Musberger handing out “all the Tostitos,” another sad reality is headed our way: Talk of schools losing lots and lots of money on bowl games. It’s become a holiday tradition, and sadly, a lot like that ugly sweater your grandma continues to re-gift you, there is no avoiding it.
The latest such talk comes to us from beautiful Clemson, SC, where the fightin’ Dabo Swinney’s are getting set to play their first major bowl game since the 1981 season. Fans are excited about a trip to the Orange Bowl, but unfortunately the administration isn’t nearly the same. Nope, the folks who run things at Clemson are about to get kicked in the teeth, thanks to bowl costs that will likely put the entire department in the red financially.
On Christmas night, the Post and Courier newspaper in South Carolina released a column stating that the school was set to lose $185,000 on their Orange Bowl expenditure, with most of the loss coming from nearly 8,500 unsold seats that Clemson will be required to buy if they can’t sell them. The rest will come in the form of housing and feeding a football team, not to mention support staff, coaching staff, band and cheerleaders. And it ain’t cheap. According to the Post and Courier, it will be a $1.91 million cost for the school, with only $1.75 million covered by the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Which means Clemson will be on the hook for the rest, with the school getting hit the hardest in ticket distribution. Understand that Clemson isn’t alone; this is a problem which has plagued programs for years, and leads most teams to lose money on their postseason trips, rather than gain any.
Before, the system has always been pretty cut and dried: the school buys tickets, the school sells the tickets to fans, everyone goes to the game and leaves happy. But unfortunately, just because something might have worked 10 years ago or 100 years ago, does not necessarily mean that it works now.
And with the internet and secondary ticket market on places like Stubhub and Craigslist, it has basically made buying tickets directly through a simply bad financial decision. The school’s themselves aren’t the only ticket game in town, leading many fans to look otherwise, and the schools to get crushed financially because of it.
In regards to the Orange Bowl specifically, a quick search on Clemson’s athletic department website shows that tickets purchased through the school (priced by the Orange Bowl) range from $225 for premium, lower level seating, to $75 for upper level seating. The problem of course is that you can get tickets for as cheap as $12 on Stubhub, and most people elect to do that. After all, who doesn’t like a $63 discount? Especially when you’re paying hundreds of dollars already for travel, food and lodging.
Unfortunately as we mentioned before, schools don’t get credit for “fans in the seats” as much as “tickets sold.” And rather than schools having the opportunity to give unsold tickets back to the Orange Bowl for distribution on their own, Clemson is forced to simply pay for them out of pocket. It’s a losing proposition for everyone involved…except the bowls of course.
And in a bowl system which has a list of flaws as long as the eye can see, this is one of the bigger ones. It is also one which causing an imbalance in the books at colleges all over the country. Last year for example, the University of Connecticut sold just 4,500 of their 17,500 allotment to the Fiesta Bowl, leaving UConn’s athletic department on the hook for over $2 million in unsold tickets. It led the school to becoming a national punch-line, and the saddest thing was that the Huskies turnout wasn’t nearly as bad as indicated in the press (according to people this author knows that were actually in the building). But unfortunately, UConn fans didn’t by tickets through the school. And when it comes to bowl economics, if you don’t buy from the school, it’s like you’re not there.
Simply put, the system is changing, and fans are getting smarter about how they spend their money and purchase their tickets.
But for schools like Clemson and many more throughout the country, the athletic department ends up the loser off the field, even if on it, the team is a winner.
For all his opinion and analysis on college football, follow Aaron on Twitter @Aaron_Torres.
