If we concentrated on the really important stuff in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles"
When you play football, you gotta like the taste of blood, And 50 percent of the time, it's your blood.
It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.
"The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
The real downer regarding the economics is that a new facility must get paid for from to revenue of the NEW seats. So, if you COULD sell 35,000 tickets for every game, the first 19,000 is what you’re already getting.
Not to mention the likely lower per seat revenue. As evidenced by the limited response to section 16’s higher priced seats.
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Your forgetting premium seating. Most new expansion anywhere in college football always include these as it is what pays for the expansion itself. There is some real money in Fargo, especially in the Ag sector, that would drop significant money to have these suites/loge boxes etc. I know there is no right answer here but SDBison is right. Without some sort of public vision for what Bison football looks like in the future, one has to assume we are stuck in the dome. What's dangerous about that though is that tickets will continue to be priced based on the I ncreasing demand and will get to the point that average alumni and fans can't afford them. Those are the people that are the backbone of an Ag school and whose kids are future donors. It's just a bad recipe for the future.
To finance a $400 million note at 5% for 20 years you’d have to sell the 16,000 new seats, the worst ones, in a new facility for what the thousand odd patrons with 3/4 scholarship seats are supposed to be paying today. A 16x increase in demand at the second highest existing price point, low 40 yard line seats, for endzone seats? Even with premium offerings, clubs, suites, boxes, whatever, the math simply doesn’t work.
I have the honor to be Your Obedient Servant - B.Aud
We all live in stories... It seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories... The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. Through that argument you change your mind sometimes... That's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison... Somebody else controls the story. - S. Rushdie
While ticket sales are certainly important for success, there are few if any stadiums that pay for themselves simply by hosting a few football games. Same can be said about NASCAR tracks with one significant event a year. It is advertising and broadcast revenues that pay the bills. In the case of college sports it can also be the fleecing of students (aka activity fees) to finance the athletic endeavors. With the possible exception of fireworks sales, very few businesses survive with 7, 8, 10 days of business operation annually. NFL owners figure out ways to get tax revenue to fund their business facilities and fans to pay the extra. College sports get support from deep pocket alumni, state revenue (taxes), and in the case of the P5, advertising/television deals. Public venues such as the FargoDome or even that tin shed in Grand Forks get built due to citizenry with some degree of vision leading the charge to enhance their cities.
Can a new indoor facility be built? Yes, but it will take backing of high profile folks to lead the folks in Fargo to believe it is needed and show how it will help the city grow. Just a curious thought, but what if West Fargo decided a new convention center was necessary and built it to handle everything from Farm Progress Shows to Bison football / soccer (out by the new medical campus, perhaps). The political infighting would be glorious to watch in the region. Fargo just might figure out how to build a bigger venue in that case.
The Fargodome isn’t going anywhere and the taxpayers of Fargo won’t approve spending a pile of their money on expanding it for more football seats.
So, yes, the extra seats would have to pay for it.
Building NEW with the Fargodome nearby would be futile because you can’t compete with a zero debt established competitor when you have crippling debt. There are thousands of farmers in North Dakota who know that concept very well.
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If we concentrated on the really important stuff in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles"
When you play football, you gotta like the taste of blood, And 50 percent of the time, it's your blood.
It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.
"The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."