RE: AAC Covering Military Bowl Expenses
Cool.
First off - cool that the conference is covering expenses for the cancelled bowl. I had assumed so, but good to see this confirmation.
Second - cool to hear about the initial effort by key boosters to cover the costs. Which then (generally) translated to donations after the confirmation of AAC covering expenses came through. (When the pandemic cancelled attendance at 2020 season Navy football games, the NAAA went out with the offer of refunds...unless of course you want to be "All in" and donate that...so now, somewhere in the Brigade of Midshipmen bleacher seating, one bench has a little engraved plaque indicating that I was All-In for 2020.)
Third - this is a cool piece of reporting because it sheds a little more light on how the conference handles bowl money. Specifically, I got all excited at reading "ECU was set to receive the first $250,000 in tickets sold revenue." So now I'm going to nerd out a little....
The conference gets the bowl payout for all the bowls, but covers expenses for bowl participants on a sliding scale, THEN pays out profit to ALL the conference members. However, a big chunk of "payout" comes in the form of ticket allotments.
What's that sliding scale? Expenses vary, related to the bowl payout, like the Military Bowl is at the top of our list, so the calculation is for {numbers to follow are slhNavy91 guesses } 100 team members plus say a traveling party of 100. Tulsa, ECU, Navy would get the same expenses paid for hotels and per diem, but Navy would get reimbursed less for travel costs than ECU, which would get reimbursed less for travel costs than Tulsa to the Military Bowl. We love the Cure Bowl because we hate cancer, but because the payout is so much lower, maybe the conference pays for 85 scholarship players and a travel party of 75...Again equal lodging and per diem costs but Tulsa gets more for travel than Navy does and UCF would get far less to go crosstown.
But a big variable is that much of bowl "payout" is in ticket sales. I recall from 2017 the Military Bowl ticket allotment being 8,000 tickets for us and for UVA. I more dimly recall the tickets being about $75 each. Pirate fans, please update me if you were planning to go before the cancellation. So that means $600,000 of the "payout" to the conference is in the ticket allotments. Half or so is about normal, so no big whup.
So I'm really interested to read "FIRST $250,000 in tickets sold revenue" going to the school...this sounds like the AAC paying off ECU for selling the first half of the ticket allotment
That's counter-intuitive to what I would have thought. I would expect the conference to eat the first half of the ticket allotment but reward the school for selling above and beyond the first half. As a Navy fan (we sell tickets everywhere), or an ECU fan going five hours north to the Military Bowl, or a UCF fan selling for this year's Gasparilla Bowl vs UF I would want to be rewarded for selling more...as a Tulsa fan looking at the Myrtle Beach Bowl or an SMU fan not wanting to go to Boston, I could see wanting to be rewarded for selling half.
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