The Wall Street Journal has put out a very interesting article about the median revenues of major football schools and the numbers are not good for baseball at all. Baseball on average at these schools lose $709,000 while the football programs make nearly 2 million dollars. These numbers are skewed as most major football schools in the northern part of the country have fully funded football programs but do not fully fund the baseball program.
Another reason is the fact that the stadiums in the northern part of the country are also sub-par. You can check out the full article by clicking here.
What can be done to save our great sport?
What can be done … ?
1. Athletic Dept. Advertising Revenue Sharing- % allocation to M/W individual sports – the allocation should be determined as a ratio of ttl. cost of program to ttl. AD dept. cost. Even though revenue is brought in through football & basketball, allocate advertising $$ by collegiate program cost.
2. Minor League baseball business model #1 – Fill the seats at all costs – adopt & allow aggressive local marketing plans to stimulate local support for ticket sales & advertising. Efforts continue to increase in this area for football & men’s basketball – require the same effort from the AD for baseball.
College Baseball can make money if the focus is there … even inside the NCAA bureaucracy.
JWSmith,
Most NCAA Baseball programs don’t even charge admission to the games. Only in the power conferences do we see admission charged and even some teams in those conferences don’t even charge.