The average student may think the University made a lot of money from the football team’s Sugar Bowl appearance, but University officials say the profits are more intangible.
Because of expenses associated with making the trip to the Sugar Bowl, LSU will not profit financially from the game.
Senior Associate Athletic Director Dan Radakovich said these expenses include travel, meals for the team and the band, contractual obligations to the coaching staff, event costs and equipment costs.
“We played in an extra game,” Radakovich said.
Radakovich cited the extra game in explaining the additional equipment costs.
“Most people think that LSU is in the chips, but it doesn’t happen that way,” said Chancellor Mark Emmert.
Emmert pointed out that the Sugar Bowl provides no free tickets and that the University has to purchase a large quantity.
According to the Sugar Bowl’s Web site, there was a $37 million payout for playing in the game. LSU is entitled to half of that.
However, LSU will only keep $1.8 million of that payout, with the rest being divided among the rest of the SEC, Radakovich said.
It is not known exactly how much of the $1.8 million will be spent on expenses because not all of LSU’s bills have been received, but Radakovich expects them to consume most, if not all, of the money.
All SEC schools contribute net revenues to a pool which is distributed evenly to all schools at the SEC Conference of Distribution, Radakovich said.
“The financial windfall occurs when a conference has two teams in the BCS, like the Big 12 did this year with Oklahoma and Kansas State,” Emmert said.
The BCS, or Bowl Championship Series, consists of the Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl.
If the SEC had two conference teams participate in the BCS, the general pool would grow significantly larger and all member schools would benefit.
Because the pool is distributed annually, LSU expects the money it receives.
“It is put into the budget for the athletic program,” Radakovich said.
The $1.8 million figure is one determined by the SEC and is not a percentage of what the Sugar Bowl awarded.
“Even if the payout had been $50 million, it wouldn’t have mattered,” Radakovich said.
Last year, LSU received $1.1 million for appearing in the Cotton Bowl, but Radakovich points out that hotels were less expensive and they stayed in town for one less day.
The Sugar Bowl mandates that the teams stay in New Orleans on the night the game is played, but the Cotton Bowl does not.
Emmert said that LSU’s Sugar Bowl appearance and national championship will result in increased revenue in the long run for the University.
“We do receive revenue from licensing and merchandise,” Emmert said.
He said that LSU’s current popularity should double the normal amount of those revenues.
“It is not the financial windfall that it seems,” Emmert said.
Emmert said that the biggest payoffs were intangible and come from a public relations standpoint.
He also noted that recruiting, exposure and the University’s stature have all increased as a result of the national championship.
“Everything gets easier when you’re successful,” Emmert said.
Profits skyrocket with Bowl victory
By Amanda Duhon, Contributing Writer
Local store managers, media conglomerates and the University celebrated LSU’s Sugar Bowl victory with record-breaking sales and increased profits.
Assistant to the Vice Chancellor Heath Price said the University’s profit goals have increased significantly because of the win.
“This year’s goal to break a million dollars in profit for LSU has increased,” Price said. “The goal now is to make $500,000 to $1 million of additional dollars because of the Sugar Bowl.”
The University gets 12 percent of the royalty rate for all national championship merchandise, Price said. The dollar amount of all profits will not be known for another three to four months after individual companies report their sales.
The money LSU gets from the royalties supports the University as a whole, Price said.
“It goes to anything from scholarships to building repairs,” Price said. “No direct department receives it.”
On the local scene, store managers enjoyed increased sales this month.
Mike and Keith Calamia, owners of Central Sports, are enjoying a month of better than average sales because of the Jan. 4 game.
“Most customers just want the T-shirts to wear,” Mike Calamia said. “Some customers buy three and four of the same shirt so when one wears out they’ll have another one to wear.”
Locally operating national chains like Academy sold thousands of Sugar Bowl T-shirts and merchandise this month after the win.
Academy manager Tony Thomas said they watched the game in the store and could not open the boxes of LSU merchandise until the end of the fourth quarter.
“It was a major deal,” Thomas said. “We were not allowed to even see the shirts in the boxes we had. If LSU would have lost the game, we were instructed to return the sealed boxes immediately.”
The store has sold more than a million dollars in merchandise since then, Thomas said. LSU championship merchandise has accounted for 60 percent of the business’ sales.
Another business reaping the benefits of the Sugar Bowl’s outcome is the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Sports editor David Meek said the paper was ready for whatever outcome, but the LSU victory resulted in unprecedented success for them.
During the week of the game, the Picayune published more than 125 pages of Sugar Bowl coverage.
This coverage was the most ever committed to one bowl game, Meek said. If LSU had not participated, the paper’s coverage would have been half as much.
The morning of the game, the Picayune prepared a special section mostly of photographs commemorating the LSU season and praising the team as national champions. The paper did not prepare a section identifying Oklahoma as champs.
“We didn’t presume to be psychics,” Meek said. “But we thought that even if Oklahoma had won, passing out a section that said so would create a lot of ill will.”
The paper printed out 15,000 copies of the section and sold 13,000 at 50 cents apiece on the day of the game.
“In the business sense, it was more trouble than it was worth,” Meek said. “We did it more for the community sense of pride.”
The paper’s Monday edition following the Sugar Bowl sold out completely. More than 300,000 papers were sold, breaking the previous record when the paper covered Elvis’ death.