UC Davis Athletics Joining Mountain West - Football to Follow
This is not entirely unrelated to football. The programs that are having success at the gate and with Gameday revenues are those that have figured out how to broaden participation in a premium experience beyond suites. Look at what Cal and UW have done converting stadium areas to bigger club areas with TVs, different food options and pricey drinks. UCU has the bootleg version of this under the basket. Irvine and SLO have pregame hoops club events where they feed the donors, fill them up with drinks and the staff comes in and breaks down the other team ahead of the game. This sort of offering appeals to a different segment of the market. At Davis, UCUC shows that simply having more seats does not translate to attendance. Same with football. Even the games with attendance listed over capacity had plenty of open seating. The addition of suites is only beneficial to the extent that Mrak wants to push some of the university partnerships more heavily into athletics. But suites are expensive and don’t generate a ton of cash if you only have 5 to sell (subtracting UC Health, Credit Union, Chancellor). A much greater ROI opportunity is a wine garden one side and a bbq/brew seating section in one of the end zones. Add TVs to appeal to non UCD die hards and the average spend will increase 4x. SLO and Montana State opened up these sections over the past couple seasons and are doing well with them.