Saturday, October 15, 2016

Weekend Reading: USF Football, Rays Stadium Funds in Hillsborough

A few sports business articles worth checking out from recent weeks:
  1. USF Football Attendance is in Crisis: With the Big 12 on the verge of announcing its expansion plans Monday, USF's last chance to make a good impression - and last chance to save its big-football dreams - has been less-than-impressive.
  2. Hillsborough Appears Ready to Raise Bed Tax: Even though the money could be used for a variety of non-stadium-related expenses too, stadium cheerleaders in Tampa are excited the bed tax could be raised a penny to potentially help fund (a small portion of) a new home for the Rays.  But Hillsborough still has a LONG way to go on financing.
  3. Dunedin's Economic Impact Claims are Worthless: This post furthers the points I've made regarding the city's campaign for public subsidies for an $81M Blue Jays spring training rehab.  It's a traveshamockery.
  4. Nobody's watching sports on TV anymore: Double-digit drops in NFL ratings, coupled with similar trends in other sports has some executives concerned...just not publicly.
  5. Everybody's still watching sports on TV: PricewaterhouseCoopers says television rights will officially surpass ticket gate revenues by 2018.  For teams like the Rays, where the cable numbers are stronger than the attendance numbers, that fateful day could come a lot sooner.






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4 comments:

  1. Regarding "Dunedin's Economic Impact Claims are Worthless:", I could not agree more.

    Here is a real world data point to ponder...

    It’s great to have pro teams, but they’re ‘nice to haves’, and certainly not a necessity. Austin, Texas seems to be doing quite fine with none. A great data point relating to how unimportant they are, at least in Florida, is what happened during spring training season in Florida in 1995 – while the MLB players were still on strike. See http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/The-Economics-of-Baseballs-Spring-Training.html , which says:

    “A study by University of Akron professor John Zipp examined the amount of taxable sales in Florida communities that hosted spring training in 1995, when the baseball strike caused teams to field second-rate “replacement players” and there was a 60 percent drop in Grapefruit League attendance. If spring training had a major financial impact on those communities, they should have suffered tremendously. That didn’t happen, and in fact, their taxable sales increased. Those findings “may indicate that spring training is not the major tourist draw that many claim,” Zipp wrote in a paper published by the Brookings Institution.”

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    1. lol, you tried to compare Dunedin w/ Austin, TX, then went on to quote some person teacher from Ohio talking about baseball 1500 mi away, 20 yrs ago?

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  2. 1) It's not their "last chance", that's like saying at the time, they're going to be in the Big East Co. or C-USA forever?
    2) There isn't many other uses of our "bed-tax" that will translate into as much returned revenue for the city of Tampa... Name one?
    3) It's a big investment, but one that will be a net gain counting all streams from the Blue Jay's influence. We kNOAH, they did it waste $, they're stupid, YOU know better!?
    4-5) TV ratings are down because more & more people are dropping cable for internet streaming...

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  3. 1) Once all the super-conferences fill up their spots, there will be no room for schools in the AAC to move up. So yes, Big 12 appears to be USF's last chance.

    2) There are lots....it can help sponsor individual events...or it can cover existing county obligations so general revenue money can be used on other important needs.

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