USF Stadium Glow Up: More Attractive to P4?

[TheUpperHand]

About five years ago, I could only afford to put $5 of gas in my tank the night before pay day. I'd say the needle on my gas gauge moved about the same as the one that decides our power conference fate when we add in a stadium.

[bullsbucsfan426]

1 hour ago, puc86 said:

And no one is going to actually address that because deep down everyone knows the idea is absurd and that’s beyond the fact anyone with eyes can see the stadium is actually a $350 million vacuum- it sucks (the perfect blend of basic and expensive that one has come to expect from a VPMK athletics regime). It’s part time to stop pretending and to do something to change our direction.

They showed us these renderings with a $150 million price tag and we said no way that’s too cheap and we handed them back, they then took out a sharpie changed the one to a 3 and Mike said it’s perfect we’ll take it as long as you can make it take longer.

$150 million isn't getting you much these days. I visited UH's stadium in 22 for the USF game (it was built for $128 million). I always thought it was a gorgeous stadium before I visited it, now I've seen it and I came away rather disappointed but hey, it does have chic-fil-a!

The $340 million includes the football-only facility by the way, and we're not paying for that either-TGH wrote a $25 million check for the facility in return for some revenue-generating opportunities for them. 

So in reality the stadium on its own will cost around $315 million. We've raised $43 million of the $50 million projected in private donations, and if they put in the work I suspect they could get to $75-100 million. We also have $30 million coming in for broadband rights and another $34 million from previous broadband sales and other sources. Finally, we have $31 million coming in from the Capital Improvement Trust Fund So as of today, we've raised $138 million of the funding target of $315M, or $163M of $340 million if you want to include the football facility from sources that do not have to be repaid (I'm assuming the $43 million in private donations does not include the TGH gift). Assuming we only get the $7 million left in the fundraising target, we're only looking at an annual debt service of $14M a year compared with $17M under the original plan. We're actually doing much better than expected on the fundraising front than originally expected as we've $30 million under original planned debt funding, or $5 million under if the TGH gift is included in the private donations. 

FYI-I'm only relying on publicly available information. 

main source: 

Florida Board of Governors approves USF’s plan for a new on-campus stadium

WWW.USF.EDU

---

The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) today voted in favor of the financing plan for the University of South Florida’s new on-campus stadium, signaling state-level support...

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by bullsbucsfan426

[puc86]

48 minutes ago, bullsbucsfan426 said:

$150 million isn't getting you much these days. I visited UH's stadium in 22 for the USF game (it was built for $128 million). I always thought it was a gorgeous stadium before I visited it, now I've seen it and I came away rather disappointed but hey, it does have chic-fil-a!

The $340 million includes the football-only facility by the way, and we're not paying for that either-TGH wrote a $25 million check for the facility in return for some revenue-generating opportunities for them. 

So in reality the stadium on its own will cost around $315 million. We've raised $43 million of the $50 million projected in private donations, and if they put in the work I suspect they could get to $75-100 million. We also have $30 million coming in for broadband rights and another $34 million from previous broadband sales and other sources. Finally, we have $31 million coming in from the Capital Improvement Trust Fund So as of today, we've raised $138 million of the funding target of $315M, or $163M of $340 million if you want to include the football facility from sources that do not have to be repaid (I'm assuming the $43 million in private donations does not include the TGH gift). Assuming we only get the $7 million left in the fundraising target, we're only looking at an annual debt service of $14M a year compared with $17M under the original plan. We're actually doing much better than expected on the fundraising front than originally expected as we've $30 million under original planned debt funding, or $5 million under if the TGH gift is included in the private donations. 

FYI-I'm only relying on publicly available information. 

main source: 

Florida Board of Governors approves USF’s plan for a new on-campus stadium

WWW.USF.EDU

---

The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) today voted in favor of the financing plan for the University of South Florida’s new on-campus stadium, signaling state-level support...

 

I think the thing you are missing is that if the money does not get you much, the thing you are spending the money on would not do much for realignment even if the money did get you much now and the stadium is only more appealing fan wise to people that are already the most invested fans then you don't waste your time and money right now on this. Find what does have an impact and target those things while making it very clear to everyone the return on investment lies there. 

[bullsbucsfan426]

29 minutes ago, puc86 said:

I think the thing you are missing is that if the money does not get you much, the thing you are spending the money on would not do much for realignment even if the money did get you much now and the stadium is only more appealing fan wise to people that are already the most invested fans then you don't waste your time and money right now on this. Find what does have an impact and target those things while making it very clear to everyone the return on investment lies there. 

The stadium is huge for client retention and sales growth. You have 12-13k students who are graduating every year. With bad football we are getting 20k in the stands. With good football you are getting 35k without much difficulty and donations will rise. You also get all the alumni who are coming back to campus. 

Better than sending them to Raymond James where we have 30-40k empty red chairs every game. Not everyone who's an STM is on this board. I'm sure @Brad would have noticed if that is the case. Some people just treat USF football as a fun thing to do on a Saturday but will keep buying tickets because it's the alma mater. 

[GoBulls84]

It makes us more attractive for two reasons: 1) It shows that even while we had down years, there is clear investment being made in the program. Between the IPF, the locker room at LRS, and now the stadium, the administration is making an undeniable investment in the athletic department. And 2) it gives USF control of athletic revenue streams. No more paying rent to TSA, no more giving a cut of parking and concessions and ticket revenue to TSA. It's revenue for the university that is a) paying down debt, and b) going back into athletics to further invest in the department.

[puc86]

8 minutes ago, bullsbucsfan426 said:

The stadium is huge for client retention and sales growth. You have 12-13k students who are graduating every year. With bad football we are getting 20k in the stands. With good football you are getting 35k without much difficulty and donations will rise. You also get all the alumni who are coming back to campus. 

Better than sending them to Raymond James where we have 30-40k empty red chairs every game. Not everyone who's an STM is on this board. I'm sure @Brad would have noticed if that is the case. Some people just treat USF football as a fun thing to do on a Saturday but will keep buying tickets because it's the alma mater. 

You solve for the issues of no one wanting to go to the games, the proper solution isn’t to spend millions to make the problem look marginally less bad.

[Chardizard]

11 hours ago, puc86 said:

I’ll bite. There are less than 1000 people on earth that are impressed by this stadium and all of them were going to be going to the games anyway.
 

No one honestly believes this will have any impact on a conference and stadiums do not generate a single penny for anyone else in a conference (they rarely are a net positive venture for anyone unless they got the tax payers to pay for it).

The only reason anyone thinks a stadium is a determining factor is because our fans made fun of the bounce house for years and being sensitive to that they sold it as a determining factor. 
 

This idea has been mostly internet fodder and no conference has ever suggested or proven in action that they care about an OCS.

If any other program said they spent $350 million on this, called it state of the art and said it was going to help get them called up there would be no end to the laughing and every other fanbase is going to laugh at us equally as hard.

We found a way to build a below average stadium just like UCF (except we didn’t have to) but hey at least we found a way to do it more than a decade later and for 5x cost, so obviously better.

Everyone always thinks their baby is beautiful and special, but a lot of babies are ugly, unremarkable and just cost a lot of money while destroying your life. 

 

[puc86]

48 minutes ago, Chardizard said:

[Chardizard]

5 minutes ago, puc86 said:

such a good movie...k sorry back on topic

[USF_Bullsharks]

10 minutes ago, puc86 said: