Fiesta Bowl document shows loss to be more than $1.6M, taking donor revenue into account

According to a new financial document obtained by The Daily Campus, the UConn athletic department valued their Fiesta Bowl losses at $1,663,560, taking into account revenue that was generated from a donor reception that wasn't included in the official summary of Fiesta Bowl expenses submitted to the NCAA.

The official summary stated the losses to be closer to $1.8 million, which was the figure reported yesterday.

Click here to view the Fiesta Bowl financial documents

In the new financial statement, the donor revenue was combined with the total ticket sale revenue and valued at $676,248. Taking into account the ticket revenue listed in the NCAA document, which totaled $507,530, it can be estimated that the donor reception generated about $168,718 worth of revenue for the school.

The university also accounted for certain costs differently in the financial statement than they did in their statement to the NCAA. One notable change was the movement of about $100,000 worth of ticket expenses from the school's total allotment (the value of the 17,500 tickets the school was required to sell) to the total cost of sending the band to the game.

Another was the separation of expenses into "team operations" and "cost of band/cheerleaders for travel," as opposed to "travel expense," "meals/lodging per diem expense" and "other expenses."

Mike Enright, the associate athletic director for communications, said that the school will also receive $3.8 million from the Big East conference for being a member of the football playing conference, though he added that this payment is unrelated to the Fiesta Bowl and that all eight Big East football schools receive it.

He also reiterated the athletic department's original stance that long-term recruiting and donor benefits, not short-term profits, were the goal of the trip.

"I think it is fair to point out that the athletic department was perfectly honest and upfront in December that these were going to be the costs of the bowl," Enright said. "We believe that the appearance in the bowl will pay great long-term benefit for the Division of Athletics and the entire university."

Since news of the financial loss broke, a great deal of the public reaction has centered on the huge amount of unsold tickets and the resulting financial bath the university took as a result.

One thing that has also been noted, however, is that there were a lot more than 2,771 UConn fans in attendance at the Fiesta Bowl.

UConn's attempts to sell tickets were severely undercut by secondary markets such as eBay and stubhub.com. With high transportation expenses just to get to the game, many fans opted to go for the better deal, rather than buy a package through the university.

It didn't help UConn's case that tickets to the game could be purchased for as little as $3.99 each on stubhub.com the day of the game.

"The number of tickets sold doesn't reflect interest in the game," Enright told the Hartford Courant last month. "It's reflective of secondary market and price of airfare and hotels."

UConn's tickets were priced at $105, $155, $190, $235 and $255. Of those tickets, the university sold 985 out of 1,000 of the $105 tickets, along with about half of the $255 ones. The other three groups of tickets, however, cost UConn dearly.

Out of those three sets, the school sold a combined 1,198 from the allotted 15,001, which was the majority of UConn's potential ticket revenue.

The Fiesta Bowl requires the school to commit to selling a particular number of tickets, in this case, 17,500. This is not unusual for bowl games, and this requirement, more than any other factor, proved to be responsible for UConn's huge financial loss. By requiring schools to sell the tickets, the Fiesta Bowl insulated itself from the potential losses and passed the buck to the participating universities.

Once UConn had the tickets, potential customers were preyed upon by the exorbitant cross-country travel costs and the better deals found on secondary markets. Given these facts, it could be argued that the losses were unavoidable.