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

[CajunVic]

Oof ....Football Ticket sales were $500k less per year under Des than they were under Napier.

Definitely a chicken or egg scenario

Oh, so we going to fill an $8mm hole with $500,000. That math did not work when Napier was here and does not work today.

[ManAboutTown]

Lol. The cost of incompetence.

[RedTails]

Well that's embarrassing, bet Martin Hall and Reinhardt Dr. aren't happy about that hitting the "local" paper.

[Scott Malkinson]

Lol. The cost of incompetence.

They need to get coaches out in the community. I'm sure that will rally the troops. Especially with Dez and Marlins great public speaking abilities.

[shof]

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

[cajun4life]

I’ll say this again. Football is healthy when 1/3 of your available seating is sold in season tickets. Thriving when 50% of the seating is sold in season tickets. This goes for every major sport, but especially so in football and basketball.

Failing to reach those benchmarks is an utter failure by the athletic department and head coaches of those two programs.

[ManAboutTown]

We literally are staring at not having a program. Like, that's where we are. We've lost ~$12mm in 24 months. So our real athletic budget is somewhere around $28mm, which is FCS level. Can't pay the cost of attendance stipend, can't pay an NIL director, can't afford staff to support marketing and sales. Can't support media in this time because you won't hold them to a standard. Won't reach out and work with other platforms. Won't get in the community and sell your brand.

They knew these numbers a year ago. Should have been a 5 alarm fire going off last year. Just what the ____ have they been doing to remedy the issue?

[Jacob81]

So the money generated(33.2m) is the same as 2022. We spent 8 million more than that. So I get that the lost 500k in ticket sales is a problem but isn’t the extra spending the bigger issue? If we sold 35,000 tickets for 6 games at $30 average. Thats 6.3 million. So we’d still be in the red.

[Fais do-do]

Well, when you lose money every football game due to lack of attendance, you cannot go very far.

[ManAboutTown]

So the money generated(33.2m) is the same as 2022. We spent 8 million more than that. So I get that the lost 500k in ticket sales is a problem but isn’t the extra spending the bigger issue? If we sold 35,000 tickets for 6 games at $30 average. Thats 6.3 million. So we’d still be in the red.

How are you coming to this?