Louisiana athletics operated at $8 million deficit during 2023 fiscal year

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Originally Posted by Jacob81

Coming to what? We spent 8mil more than we made. Selling out football alone wouldn’t even overcome that deficit

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Basketball is a huge loss every year under Marlin.

35,000 attendance x 6 games =210,000 at $30 a ticket average = 6.3 million. If that’s what you’re asking.

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Originally Posted by Jacob81

35,000 attendance x 6 games =210,000 at $30 a ticket average = 6.3 million. If that’s what you’re asking.

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25k more people spending an average of 20 bucks in concessions at a game is an extra $3 million a year.

Thats on concessions alone. Now add in apparel and merch. Parking, tailgating etc.

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Originally Posted by cajun4life

Basketball is a huge loss every year under Marlin.

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I'm sure those charter flights aren't helping

Ok so average person in attendance spends $50 8million%50=160,000%6= 26,667 people. So if we can average that many people at that price point we can get to the black.


Get rid of Marlin and you’ll see 1-1.5k increase in attendance almost instantly as well.

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Originally Posted by facelessjonmoon

I'm sure those charter flights aren't helping

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I’m not against the charter flights, but we have a 12k seat arena and we can’t sell 2k in season tickets.

It’s time to drastically reduce the base pay for football and basketball. Increase the incentive pay with attendance and season ticket sales.

Some have a difficult time with math. Many here have posted that they do not partake in concessions because of the price, quality and lines. I’m not sure what the answer may be but am very sure spending another $1,250,000 to $2,500,000 on a HFC would have just put us further in the hole. See attendance under Napier.

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Originally Posted by cajun4life

I’m not against the charter flights, but we have a 12k seat arena and we can’t sell 2k in season tickets.

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I agree.... Its a big problem
At this point with the price of everything (in general) going through the roof I'm not sure if I'll renew my 6 bball season Tix next year

Biggest thing is the disconnect from the fanbase or lack there of and the administration.

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Originally Posted by shof

I’m not dismissing the lost ticket sales revenue, but is MH funding athletics fully yet??

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That is a highly politically charged issue. When you are (right or wrong) already losing the perception battle of how you fund athletics, piling more general fund transfers probably isn’t the best until the revenue/donation aspect improves.

Pretty sure they only budget 2% vs 3% of total school revenues......hence they have 10-12M of funds available to athletics NOT in budget but well within the 3% state cap.

They just as soon simply budget to the full 3% available and report a surplus.

I just can't understand how one would think we have a spending problem when our two biggest money generators can't average 40% of their attendance capacity. We get brutalized by Ticketmaster and how long did that take to change? We get brutalized by Sodexo, and how long will that take to change? We lost $3mm in revenue after Barnes and Noble took over merchandise. How long will that take to change and when will the person responsible for that jackassery be fired?

If you look at the trends, season tickets and attendance have declined three straight years in basketball and two straight years in football. We don't pay full cost of attendance and we have a skeleton staff for everything. The issue is generating revenue in the current climate of collegiate athletics.

When I found out we weren't selling out Lamson and Russo, I knew we were in trouble. I had no idea it would be this bad. And this is from LAST year. Wait until the 2023 numbers get tailed up.