UCLA athletic department has $18.9M deficit
Hard times in Westwood...
Guess they won't be making any more coaching changes anytime soon.
January 24th, 2020 at 8:44 PM ^
Josh Christopher - think about NIL rights. Ⓜ️ ? cannon
January 24th, 2020 at 8:46 PM ^
wonder if/how title IX figures into the math on this one.
January 25th, 2020 at 11:13 AM ^
The article has a pretty thorough post-mortem: major contributors were coach buyouts for men's football and basketball as well as decreased attendance in those sports.
January 24th, 2020 at 8:46 PM ^
This is only gonna get more common in the coming years.
January 24th, 2020 at 9:00 PM ^
You got that from the article?
January 24th, 2020 at 11:43 PM ^
Probably true. Attendance dropping and then factor in paying the players...unless they go full NFL with selling jerseys, booze in the stadiums, etc, this is going to be more common.
January 25th, 2020 at 8:03 AM ^
It happens more than people know...and you're right, it'll increase. FSU is a good example...FSU used to be a women's college, for teachers and nurses. As you can imagine, that doesn't produce a lot of billionaire or multi-millionaire alumni, donating money. There is no "old FSU money" and there are schools around the country that have their own unique circumstances that are prohibitive to keeping up with the joneses.
January 25th, 2020 at 10:52 AM ^
It's about to start happening here. The AD has gauged fans about as far as they can with price increases all while the seat donation is no longer tax deductible. The vibe of gameday has changed, it really has gone from "what can we do to make it more inviting" to "you'll pay for this and you'll like it". I've said before, my uncle is giving up his 4 seats after 40 years and he's not the only one. People my age are not lining up to buy tickets to replace those people. The AD better adapt soon or they're gonna have this same issue within 10 years.
January 25th, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
Not directly related to UCLA, but I hope that poorly run AD’s will be forced to change in this new era. No one (except football alums) wants tuition to subsidize a football team that can’t make enough money to stay out of the red. It also usually means that they’re shitty and It’s not uncommon for AD’s to lose money when they support expensive sports that do not profit, like football.
Their was all sorts of talk about this at EMU a few years ago. I wonder if they make any money now that they have a decent coach who can actually win a few games
January 25th, 2020 at 11:37 AM ^
It's been happening for a while. The article is a tad dated but it illustrates the point. Only 24 FBS athletic departments were in the black.
Even fewer are schools like Michigan where the athletic department doesn't take public funds.
January 24th, 2020 at 8:52 PM ^
They play in the most beautiful stadium/setting in the world and can't fill it. Maybe they should consider building a stadium close to campus and not playing their games an hour away.
January 24th, 2020 at 8:58 PM ^
LA is not a football town. USC can't fill up the Coliseum, either. The Rams still have that new team smell after the old version couldn't sell out a stadium since their last Super Bowl in 1980-something. The Raiders couldn't even make it work there! LA is not conducive to football - especially when the team sucks. And UCLA has sucked for years...
January 24th, 2020 at 9:35 PM ^
Don't forget that every Chargers "home" game is a home game for their opponent. The developers should've programmed that into Madden 20.
I know the NFL missed having pro football in LA, but did LA miss it?
January 25th, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
And the Chargers home games are played in a 32k seat soccer stadium. But that’s going to change. They are moving into a $5B stadium with the Rams. They’ll still essentially be away games though. The Chargers are more of an afterthought than the pre-Ballmer Clippers.
January 25th, 2020 at 3:18 PM ^
This is what I don’t understand. How can they continue to build these expensive stadiums? Who is paying for them? A stadium in general is so expensive to run. Even with beer and alcohol sales I just don’t see how these places make any money with attendance that is usually poor unless the team is really having a great year. Let alone one that costs 5 billion. It seems like one of these MBA grads would have come up with the idea to play all games in a lost cost facility, offer no tickets, pipe in crowd noise, cut your expenses and not have any ticketed games until the playoffs. This is where we are headed.
January 25th, 2020 at 7:44 PM ^
Footbal stadiums can have other events besides football.
January 26th, 2020 at 1:48 AM ^
Uh huh, you think that’s all they need to do? Outdoor stadiums are limited due to weather and rarely have events outside of football season due to this fact. If they have a dome, how many events do you think could actually sell out a football stadium? Answer: not many. I’d love to hear some raw numbers though, please share. That’s why I asked the question. Your answer was insightful though.
January 24th, 2020 at 11:23 PM ^
USC fills the stadium when they're good.
LA is a front-running town. They like teams that win. You can't blame them, as they get their fair share of winners. The most durably popular teams are the ones that win frequently.
What LA is not is stadium-friendly. The Rams are finally moving into a new stadium, but it took 30 years to get a single place built. There have been a half dozen efforts to build a stadium, all of them prior to this one total failures. Even existing stadiums have a hard time, with Pasadena barely being able to put a fresh coat of paint on the Rose Bowl without some trouble or other.
Obviously, this hurts UCLA's ability to draw fans considerably. As does UCLA's current run of being terrible. They just don't have the massive revenue potential of other football programs, and it's killing their department.
But there is just no way for them to build a new stadium to fix this. There is no space nearby, and on campus is unthinkable.
January 24th, 2020 at 11:45 PM ^
UCLA doesn’t have a football culture anything like most B1G schools. It would be like Northwestern trying to fill a huge stadium - even if the team is great, it will never happen.
January 25th, 2020 at 10:49 AM ^
This is a problem for all of the California schools. College football is just not much of a thing here. Cal spent a hundred million dollars adding suites to their stadium and couldn't recoup it because no one bought them. The only games that Stanford sells out are games against the bluebloods. Even during Stanford's elite run during the 2010's, if you drove by Stanford stadium on a game day, you could barely tell there was a game going on. The Pac-12 Championship Game is played at Levi's Stadium every year, and you can usually get tickets on the cheap because no one cares.
January 25th, 2020 at 11:22 AM ^
I love college football, but I expect that I'm like most Los Angelenos in that I have better things to do on a gorgeous fall day than dedicating 8 hours to an aggravating drive to a far away place to park on a golf course with crappy tailgating to sit in a half full stadium watching a football team from a college I didn't attend play a mediocre and meaningless game.
It only takes 3 1/2 hours to watch this same mediocre and meaningless football game from home, and I can fold laundry while I'm doing it.
January 25th, 2020 at 2:23 AM ^
They don't even have a regulation size practice field. A stadium is never going to happen. There is no room on that campus. Land is so precious around Westwood, they had to build a massive parking lot underground.
January 24th, 2020 at 9:39 PM ^
Football is a man's game. California not the place for that.
January 24th, 2020 at 9:41 PM ^
There are no men in California?
January 24th, 2020 at 9:59 PM ^
Just raisins.
January 25th, 2020 at 4:41 AM ^
...and happy cows.
January 25th, 2020 at 1:29 AM ^
Give me your address and we’ll see who’s a man
January 25th, 2020 at 2:23 AM ^
Why don't you meet him in Temecula
January 25th, 2020 at 11:39 AM ^
Or a bitch slap fight in West Hollywood.
January 24th, 2020 at 9:57 PM ^
Their budget has grown from $42 million to $130 million since 2002. That is nuts.
January 25th, 2020 at 5:32 AM ^
The Rose Bowl is amazing BUT! This isn’t a on campus stadium and it’s very far from campus. They can never fill that place even if they were winning w the economy in LA moving higher and higher. If they were smart they would build there own stadium on Campus and that would fix things real quick!
January 25th, 2020 at 11:58 AM ^
What you said is pretty much true for all football games at schools with a successful history. Add in the years where we have a terrible home schedule (next season) and you have to sit in the freezing cold or rain for half of the season. A costly experience both monetarily and time.