There are many very affordable season ticket packages at Iowa State. An option for almost every budget. You can sit in the lower bowl for less than $80 per ticket. That is cheep!!! Have you been to a NFL game or a concert lately? $80 is a deal. Many people choose to donate and improve their seats. They want to support their University and our D1 football program. They are important to the competitiveness of Iowa State. This is in part how Iowa State must do it because we don’t have mega donors like our competitors. Iowa State didn’t make the rules in which they now have to compete, but if we don’t want to be another UNI in the state more money is going to be needed to keep us relevant. You can either ***** about it every step of the way or do what you can to support your university and enjoy what we have available to us.
CR Gazette: ISU AD facing potential $147M deficit by 2031 with direct to player payments
- Thread starter ISUCyclones2015
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I agree it's the way ISU has to do things to get by, but by raising ticket prices they are also pricing a lot of people out of the market for season tickets. Our four seats for the upcoming year, no donation between tickets and parking is right at 2 grand. That is a lot of money for 6 football games for many families in. this economy.
It's reaching the point that the state needs to start to step in, raise the current rate tax on legal betting in the state and use the money to support all three instate schools, not sure how much money that would bring in, but Iowa is only taxing this betting at 5%, one of the lowest tax rates in the country. Again it's also silly that ISU is missing out on revenue from beer sales to the general public, a million or two each year could not hurt.
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I know someone who has them and some of the seats are not bad, but you have to move for every game
not sure but to make people mad I think there should be something and yet they spend $200 to $300 a game for parking passes.
Well good luck with that. I think most people are tapped out and tired. Here common Joe pay more so college kids can make hundreds of thousands to play ball. Most people aren't that vested in athletics. by being a regular on this board people already care more than most. I'll buy my tkts, but some we will stuff. But I'm not writing extra checks, more power to those who do.
Everything is more expensive over time. You can talk about pricing people out, but that's why there are different seat/price levels. If $2k is too much, then the mobile tickets are still cheaper by abt $500. Or you can get a minipack and go to less games.
The airlines figured out long ago, that if the plane was full, then you didn't charge enough to maximize revenue. Same with stadiums. Everybody loves a sellout, but if you're selling out, you should be charging more to max out revenue. That's why UNI/TOE games are more expensive since forever.
I totally agree they should be taxing gambling much more. I think there was a lot on that in another thread, with almost all agreeing it should be taxed, but then a LOT of disagreement (to put it nicely LOL) on where the money should go. So even if it gets taxed I think its long odds it gets sent off to JP.
To ask the state for help (with a straight face), ISU has to get more efficient and stop the bleeding caused by the HUGE money-losing sports.
Last year:
Women’s basketball: $4.6 mil in the red
Women’s volleyball: $2 mil plus in red
Wrestling: $2 mil plus in red
Mens T/F: $2 mil plus in red
Women’s soccer: $2 mil plus in red
Softball: $1.6 mil in red
You need to severely downsize those sports’ expenses to ethically ask for outside help IMO.
If I were a state legislator and Pollard came to me for money, while he’s trotting out a sport losing $4.6 mil, I’d start laughing.
don't disagree with you one bit. we are planning on reducing number of tickets for fb and mbb next year due to money as job is being reduced hours wise and no raise. what I was saying about this person who buys mobile tickets and then that kind of money to park should maybe give a little more to have a parking spot and having extra tickets to sell is hard cause people think prices are still in the $50-$75 a fb ticket. just my thoughts and my rant. thanks and just mowed the lawn so hot and tired and cranky.
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But they can’t cut some of those sports/probably cut the funding too much without getting into title ix issues.
Also, I may be alone in this, but the idea of cutting pretty much every sport other than football and basketball (those that make a profit) would really cause my interest to decrease. Because at that point, why are we even having college sports?
Every college loses money in every sport but MBB and Football, it's just a way of life. In 2024 the EIU woman went to the championship game, and sold out every game, while their men's team was playing in a half full arena most nights. Guess what the men finished in the black by about $5 million while the women lost money.
ISU has to maintain so many sports to be a member of the conference, I believe are now two over that minimum, and because of title IX it would mean cutting a men's sport. So cutting Men's T/F saves you a couple of million, about the same amount selling alcohol would bring in.
Until guide rails are put in place or a huge donor steps up, schools like ISU in the B12 and ACC or going to struggle, hell maybe that is the plan, to whittle away enough schools so that the SEC and B10 can fill in with 10 schools or so and then start this super league that everyone in charge seems to want.
In many ways the athletic departments ballooned with the wild influx of cash in the 2010s, and need to be brought back down to reality now that pay for play is fully in the picture.
Per https://knightnewhousedata.org/fbs/big-12/iowa-state-university: (if someone has better data I am willing to be corrected)
In 2010 ISU annual expenses were 50mil (72mil inflation adjusted to 2024).
In 2024, ISU annual expenses were 123mil
Revenues were 42mil (60mil infl adj)\122mil
That's a 50-60 mil gap in inflation-adjusted dollars. Even just clawing back 1/3 of that would cover the players' 20mil.
The problem is that ISU isn't unique in this. What should be happening is that every budget is taking a ~20mil cut out of that increase to get their NIL funds. But because no one wants to do that unilaterally, the burden is being pushed out on fans and cuts are coming from fan amenities (things like the Hilton improvements) instead of reducing other expenses. But when you really think about it, when they've had that kind of explosion of revenue over the last 15 years its pretty laughable that its fans being asked for that money. And I imagine the state is going to look at direct assistance similarly.
Didn’t say cut - and I wouldn’t like any downsizing, although Pollard is certainly proposing this.
And FYI I’m a long time womens bb season ticket holder and fan.
News flash: Those numbers aren't unique to Iowa State. That happens everywhere.
Where's the 50-60M over inflation going? Coaches salaries? Facilities? Travel? Admin? I suppose its all of that, but IDK what % to each.
Where would you cut back?
JP required every sport to cut their budget by 10% this year ( I wonder if the gazette factored that in?)
To be fair, I think media rights dollars give important context for women's basketball and the other sports.
Below are the media rights data in Iowa State's FY 2024 AD Financial Report. Media rights for football and men's basketball get separated out into their own buckets, because that's how the deals work. But third-tier media rights aren't allocated by sport, so they don't count as women's basketball, wrestling, or other specific sport revenues.
So if a substantial portion of those third-tier media rights revenues is due to women's basketball, the sport-by-sport budget numbers will exaggerate how much women's basketball is in the hole. Not saying the non-football and non-men's basketball sports aren't in the red, just that it's not as extreme as it might look on its face.
It probably needs to be a little of all of the above, but without more knowledge of the nitty gritty of it all it'd be hard to say which needs the largest target. To the ones above one could also ask what staffing levels are like now vs back then?
Does anybody have a serious study by a B-School professor or economist about the marketing value sports (mostly football, let's be honest here) add to the brand value and revenue of a university?
If we get a good number for Iowa State, can't the AD just invoice the university for the amount?
I'm being 3/4ths serious here.
If we get a good number for Iowa State, can't the AD just invoice the university for the amount?
I'm being 3/4ths serious here.
You can work the numbers different ways, but based on last year's statement. You could cut all the men's sports that lose money and a proportionate number of women's sports/scholarships and save a little north of $10 million a year. This would prevent Title IX problems.
HOWEVER, we can not do that today because we would fall below the minimum number of sports needed to be Division 1.
So, the question for me is who comes out on top in the NCAA. Do smaller schools like ISU convince the NCAA to drop the minimum number of sports OR do the wealthy bluebloods make the NCAA hold the limit to financially break the ISUs of the world and push them to being some sort of mid-major level.
