Rice Eccles Stadium Case Study

The point of facilities has been to give the “wow” factor to visiting prospects. In almost all cases the facilities at a college will be better then the high school or junior college the student athlete is coming from. It is also believed that having better facilities will directly correlate with recruiting success, especially against rival colleges.

Mt. Vernon does have other things to look forward to in the town so they would never spend 5.6 million on a stadium. The booster club is only willing to buy jerseys for the team every four years, and those are varsity only jerseys. That means the freshman are wearing jerseys up to ten years old. In fact the school did its first major improvement to the field in decades. The school put in brand new bleachers into the side of a hill because they don 't want to spend the money to make a real stadium. The money for these bleachers didn 't come from the town directly either. It came from hard work of fundraising and the players and players parents doing most of the work. Bryce Cox, a Mt. Vernon lineman, drew a picture that sold for five hundred dollars. It is all going to the football program because the program is doing anything to get money for better gear and more opportunities on the football field.

The least successful facility is Eastern Michigan’s Rynearson Stadium. According to the NCAA they have averaged less than 7,500 fans per game over the last couple of years. This is due to the poor performance of the team. The most successful football stadium is Northern Illinois Huskie Stadium. They are number one in the MAC for attendance. They had around a total of 1 million fans attend their games over the last eight years. This is due to there team’s success. From 2010-2013 they went 34-8 (Daley, 2013. I noticed when looking this up that winning is one of the most important parts of having a successful

The University of Nevada Reno’s Football program officially started fifty years ago in the October of 1966. At the same time the team was established, Mackay stadium was built which seated only 7,500 people at the time. After numerous amounts of renovations, the stadium now seats 26,000 people and the football games are very loud and exciting. Being a football player and student myself, I get to hear what other people outside the football program perceive of us as around campus when we win, lose, or just in general about the football program. Most comments and accusations I have heard have been false and negatively based. What most people do not see is the hardwork and dedication it takes to be apart of the football program and the impact it has on the coaching staff, the community, and also, the inseparable bond it creates between the players.

Sports Stadiums are an iconic staple of American tradition. However not everything about these venues is positive. Team owners take advantage of laws and fans to meet their own goals. Citizens and city officials from various locations have taken up their grievances with the NFL in the past. And it has gotten to the point where even political parties join together to bring to light issues with the organization. NFL stadiums are not good for cities because they take advantage of tax payers, hurt citizens on an economic level and cost them billions in subsidies.

Then came the concern that the universities built stadiums that were too big. Many feared that there would not be enough people to fill the seats on game day. A majority of the stadiums were built too large for the time period. The teams had to grow their fan basis by winning important games in order to get more people through the gates. Also, many stadiums were built to hold one big game and crowd a year. But, would this one game bring enough money in to pay off the millions of dollars that were spent to build the stadium? The large stadiums eventually paid off when the fan base became larger, but it took years for that to happen. Now, there are so many people that want to come to the games that there is simply not enough room for everyone.

Athletic events aren’t always held at traditional arenas. Those venues may cost far more money than an amateur sports team (and some professional teams) could possibly afford.

Large privately owned facilities like the campus stadium require a dedicated staff of personnel, rather than a sporadic or incident response team. Therefore, security at the stadium during games can be best provided by the private sector. The public law enforcement agencies in the community can and should be alerted as to when games are being attended so that they can provide back-up support or ancillary services when required.

For example, the Oregon University Athletics program alone makes $196 million a year just off of sports sales. And twenty other colleges are making over $100 million a year with the athletes still not being paid. Almost every college makes their money off sporting resources like admission, or jersey sales. But almost all of their main money source comes from ticket sales. Depending on the seat view or spot will range from about $14 to $4,250 per ticket. And if the event is a special game the cost rises, along with the team or area. And the thing is that the majority of the money coming from sports the colleges use on things not even needed. Auburn University used money from its sales on a 11,000 foot HD screen for the stadium worth 13.9 million. And many other schools used the money from sporting events for different additions to the school worth well over $50

As an Iowa State student, I enjoy going to the games and supporting my school and team. The games are what I look forward to every weekend. There is a common characteristic of the love for Iowa State and Iowa State’s athletic teams in the stadium. The excitement from all the students and other Iowa State fans brings joy to my eyes. My favorite part of the football games is when all the fans in the student section are standing on the bleachers and cheering together and supporting our team. Although our football may not be very good, we still go to the all games and see our football players do the best they can and bring a win for Iowa State University. Everyone enjoys when the fight song plays and when we sing all the common cheers all together. The stadium gets so loud when there is an exciting play that happens in the game. When there is a touchdown for Iowa State the stadium gets so loud that I can’t even hear myself think and I enjoy the commotion from everyone where we all go around and high-five the people around us. With so many fans, the stadium must have a good size to hold all the cheering fans in one place. Because of so many fans, the stadium is the sixth largest stadium in the Big 12 Conference (by capacity) and the third newest in the conference. The record for most attendees to a single-game was against Kansas State with an attendance 56,800 people

2 In the early 2000’s, Ohio State decided to undergo major renovations to their stadium so, they could fit more people inside of their games. They constructed over 11,000 more seats in the stadium allowing the school to generate increased amounts of revenue. During the period of renovation from the 1999 season to the 2001 season, the supply of seats inside of the stadium increased dramatically. This improvement showed well worthwhile because every single home game, the stadium was packed over capacity. There was an average of 1,964 extra fans at every home game of the 2001 football season.

In the City of Houston, the interest in the world of sports has grown to tremendous heights over the recent years due to winning teams, new teams and new sports facilities. Among these new facilities is the new reliant stadium, which is home to a fairly new Houston Texans football team since 2002 and Minute Maid park home of the Houston Astros. Not long ago, things were much different. Before Reliant stadium and Minute Maid we had the Astrodome. Instead of the Houston Texans, we had the Houston Oilers. Both very capable football teams in two different arenas.

The growing interest and boom in popularity in the sport was obvious, in fact the change was so quick and the colleges, with their old-school style stadiums meant for crowds who, only a few years ago, would have been in much smaller proportions, were run over with the amount of people that came in to watch their games. In 1922, it was estimated that 500,000 people were turned down from buying tickets simply due to the lack of space. The total number of fans themselves was growing rapidly as the number grew, in fact in one year alone the total number of fans went from 10 million in 1924 to 12 million in 1925. Because of this school directors and boards of committees saw the major economic implications ahead of them and decided that in order to maximize profits they should simply build bigger stadiums, which they did. Yale was one of the first to see the coming boom and quickly raised its capacity from 50,000 in 1903 to 78,000 by 1914. With the amount of fans growing unproportionately to the growing sizes of the stadiums growing so rapidly talks of a 165,000

Southwestern University: F The recent success of Southwestern University’s football program is causing SWU’s president, Joel Wisner, more problems than he faced during the team’s losing era in the early 1990s. For one thing, increasing game-day attendance is squeezing the town of Stephenville, Texas and the campus. Complaints are arising over parking, seating, concession prices, and even a shortage of programs at some games. Dr. Wisner, once again, turns to his stadium manager, Hank Maddux. This time, he needs a guaranteed revenue stream to help fuel the stadium expansion. One source of income could easily be the high-profit game programs. Selling for $6 each, programs are a tricky business. Under substantial pressure from

State and local governments have become increasingly responsible for financing many of the new arenas and stadiums demanded by professional sports teams. While local officials have a long history of efforts to attract team to their communities, the task of securing the funds needed to build the required playing facilities is relatively new. During the early years of professional sports through the 1950s, most teams played their home games in a privately owned stadium or arena. Team owners wanted little involvement from the public sector in their business affairs. Later, when publicly funded facilities became more common, the teams and other users paid rental fees that helped offset the