Now having subscribed to season tickets for a few years and observing stadium attendance and ticket prices, I see more how #5) Money can dominate, and I say this not as a bad thing, but just as a realistic thing.
First, you'll notice how much the ticket prices vary each game, and the after-market prices have even greater disparities. Even though tickets for the San Diego State game might command, say, $40 and a USC ticket might command $120, even that is misleading. The SD State game is the "educator appreciation day" where a teacher in the Bay Area can get 4 tickets free. And not only are UC Davis tickets less expensive, that game is"family day" where kids can come free with the purchase of an adult ticket. And even with all of these promotions, the stadium is still pretty empty for those games, with the accompanying loss of revenues in concessions and parking, and TV viewership.
So imagine the ND game charging 3x per ticket, selling pretty much the 50,000 seats at those higher prices, and games like UC Davis selling with a face-value one third of a Notre Dame or USC, with a largely empty stadium, even when giving away many thousands of tickets. On top of that, way more people watch the Notre Dame game on TV. And even after all that, when you play FCS teams, you lose either way -- either you gotta pay them like $500k to come to your home, or you have to travel to their smaller and less-attended stadium.
Notre Dame has a brobdingnagian stadium and charges incredible sums to sit there (their mandatory donations dwarf ours), and just imagine splitting the revenues from that game and getting TV revenues from that. In turn, they want a marquee matchup with one of the best-known universities in the world. That generates interest.
In terms of continuing traditions, well-known schools benefit from rivalries with other well-known schools. Think of the old Michigan-Notre Dame series.
On top of that, I think schools that try to do things the right way (student athletes who graduate, no recruiting scandals, sportsmanship) want to play other schools with similar values. I think that's one of the reasons programs want to play each other when there's a relationship, like a mutual interest in a Stanford-Vanderbilt game.
In addition to all of this, I've heard Stanford loses season ticket holders in even-numbered years because the lack of marquee games, and I imagine having Notre Dame and USC at home on alternating years kind of saves them. Without one of them on alternating years, I could see a LOT of season ticket holders dropping.
It's kind of frustrating, because Stanford out fundraises all other universities in the world for its general fund, and the SEC gets away with murder playing only 8 conference games and 7 home games a year, but in athletics, Stanford couldn't afford to replace Notre Dame with a homestand against the Citadel or UMass Minutemen. But they may soon move an FCS game from the front of the season to late in the season, so that is at least something. hooray
First, you'll notice how much the ticket prices vary each game, and the after-market prices have even greater disparities. Even though tickets for the San Diego State game might command, say, $40 and a USC ticket might command $120, even that is misleading. The SD State game is the "educator appreciation day" where a teacher in the Bay Area can get 4 tickets free. And not only are UC Davis tickets less expensive, that game is"family day" where kids can come free with the purchase of an adult ticket. And even with all of these promotions, the stadium is still pretty empty for those games, with the accompanying loss of revenues in concessions and parking, and TV viewership.
So imagine the ND game charging 3x per ticket, selling pretty much the 50,000 seats at those higher prices, and games like UC Davis selling with a face-value one third of a Notre Dame or USC, with a largely empty stadium, even when giving away many thousands of tickets. On top of that, way more people watch the Notre Dame game on TV. And even after all that, when you play FCS teams, you lose either way -- either you gotta pay them like $500k to come to your home, or you have to travel to their smaller and less-attended stadium.
Notre Dame has a brobdingnagian stadium and charges incredible sums to sit there (their mandatory donations dwarf ours), and just imagine splitting the revenues from that game and getting TV revenues from that. In turn, they want a marquee matchup with one of the best-known universities in the world. That generates interest.
In terms of continuing traditions, well-known schools benefit from rivalries with other well-known schools. Think of the old Michigan-Notre Dame series.
On top of that, I think schools that try to do things the right way (student athletes who graduate, no recruiting scandals, sportsmanship) want to play other schools with similar values. I think that's one of the reasons programs want to play each other when there's a relationship, like a mutual interest in a Stanford-Vanderbilt game.
In addition to all of this, I've heard Stanford loses season ticket holders in even-numbered years because the lack of marquee games, and I imagine having Notre Dame and USC at home on alternating years kind of saves them. Without one of them on alternating years, I could see a LOT of season ticket holders dropping.
It's kind of frustrating, because Stanford out fundraises all other universities in the world for its general fund, and the SEC gets away with murder playing only 8 conference games and 7 home games a year, but in athletics, Stanford couldn't afford to replace Notre Dame with a homestand against the Citadel or UMass Minutemen. But they may soon move an FCS game from the front of the season to late in the season, so that is at least something. hooray