It becomes much simpler financially if UNC can get to a P2 conference, for one, but there's also minimal cost in maintaining the 24 non-revenue sports outside of baseball and women's basketball. That's why UNC is working hard on program-specific endowments to cover the operational costs for those sports. But collectively, yes, it becomes a challenge with 26 sports operating at a loss. That being said, there remains a commitment to funding the sports currently being played.
Forbes ?? Candidate for SC
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I don’t think letting your coach who’s coaching on a home team discount walk while football is a train wreck and there’s major controversy over the future of basketball will help drive revenue. Baseball is the only sport where it doesn’t feel like we’re burning money right now. Just my opinion.
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Greg…any ideas on some revenue-generating approaches? The First Pitch dinner has done well, correct? Maybe we can expand it some or raise the cost a little. I don’t post this with any solutions in mind…but I agree with you that we need more money generated given how good our program has been and how high demand gets when postseason rolls around.
Keep winning you can raise season ticket prices, easily. They do it every year for football
A table for 8 has doubled over the past 2 years, so costs have been raised.
Those types of meet-and-greets certainly are beneficial, but the more the fanbase grows, the more butts you get in the seats and the more you can charge for tickets.
Here are the per-seat ticket revenue breakdowns for the four primary sports in 2024-25:
Football:$39.85
MBB: $53.33
WBB: $5.64
Baseball: $8.98 (includes regionals/supers)
I know there are probably regulations around the NCAA host sites, but it blew my mind that I didn’t see a single mention of the Diamond Heels club and being able to join for only $100 a year. Felt like a huge opportunity to cash in on some positive momentum.
Athletics needs to do more promotion of baseball generally
Making sure I understand what this means. Is it (total revenue) / (total tickets sold)?
Rumblings this evening around Columbia is that the search is “very close to wrapping up.” The expectation is that it ends this week, sooner rather than later.
No, eight dollars and 98 cents average per seat
You laugh, but I’d pay a good sum to lead off every inning with Kickstart My Heart
Hey, I was there, the rally started when they played it over the PA.
Buddy and me were like, we need some tunes, and bam, there it is!
Not just “until we get in SEC or B10”, but UNC will continue experiencing that revenue gap for years after the move. Texas and Oklahoma both accepted substantially less conference shares (OK’s 2024 share was just $2.6M) to join SEC and paid B12 a huge exit fee. UCLA paid $30M to exit the Pac13. Oregon and Washington both accepted less than full conference shares to join the Big Ten.
So don’t count on UNC getting a full conference share from either the SEC or B1G, but absolutely bet your last dollar on UNC paying a substantial (min $75M) exit fee to the ACC. It will be a number of years to reach the financial break even point with any conference move.
UNC is one of the few schools that would be a perfect addition for both the Big10 and SEC. So that gives us negotiation leverage that none of the other schools had or have.
Year 1 of the move will be revenue positive - even with a financed buyout fee.
I paid $350 per seat this year for season tickets. I would happily pay double that if it would help the program. I pay considerably more for my season tickets for basketball and football, but baseball is so much more enjoyable.
UNC is my school and I love it, but we don’t have anywhere near the negotiating leverage of Texas.
True, but the Texas discount was part of the Big12 early exit settlement and the GoR with the Big12. Texas will get a full SEC share this year.
We have already settled the GoR issue with the ACC, so we would be looking to get a full share (and perhaps some help with the exit fee) from the highest bidder.
Big difference between UNC and UT/OU is that we’re top priority for two conferences so I highly doubt we take a reduced share to join either league.
any chance we could interest South Carolina in a well-known football coach instead?
I like your thinking! We could throw in a gold digger to sweeten the pot. South Carolina is baselessly arrogant enough to be interested.
I'll be the oddball here, but I wouldn't pay double for baseball season tickets. It's 2 hrs for us to get to the Bosh for games. Because the start times for Sunday games is usually 1 PM, we can't make church then the game. So we already lose out on the Sunday game each series. Then add the fact that most midweek and some Friday games start around 3 PM, we struggled to make 50% this year. I think you'd do better with attendance if you made the start times a little more friendly.
They aren't going to have February and March midweek and non-con Friday games later at night. It's cold and isn't good for player safety and welfare. Sunday games can't be moved back because visiting teams are very often on travel curfews where they need to leave Chapel Hill by a certain time because many college baseball programs do not have chartered flights.
I'm sure the department would love to have better start times for a lot of these games but there's more factors at play there than just finding a way to get more butts in seats.
This is the type of response I expected. The player safety comment is utter bull crap. Guys don't get hurt because they're playing baseball in February and March. And pushing a start time back an hour or two doesn't endanger them in any way. High school games are played in the afternoon and evenings in February and March all across the state of NC. I participated in a homerun derby and tournament when it was 34 degrees in March in a high school tournament. It sucked, but no one got hurt.
I live west of Winston and know for a fact Wake Forest has more favorable midweek game times than UNC does. Their midweek and Friday games are often at 5-7 PM. The ACC seems to hold the 1 PM start time on Sunday unless the game is televised (which is usually 3 PM for ACCN Sunday games). A 2 PM Sunday start wouldn't make a huge difference in travel for schools but it could for fans.
In today's ACC, we're not competing with the SEC as far as the $$$ they can throw at their programs and players. But any way we can generate even a dent in the revenue gap will help. It's basic economics - generate demand where you can, which will dictate cost. As it relates to Coach Forbes, I hope he doesn't leave. But I know for certain...well, let's leave it at this. We aren't even close to being on a level playing field with a team who finished next-to-last in the SEC.
For the sake of the argument, let’s say there isn’t an increased injury risk in cold weather and it just sucks to play in (there is, but I’ll give you this one). Player experience is always, and should always be prioritized over fan convenience.
Moving all these midweek non con games against uninspiring opponents to 6 or whatever in February and March isn’t going to draw people like you think it will. Casual fans are not going to show up to watch 40 degree baseball. They just aren’t.
I’m sorry you live 2 hours away from chapel hill and you have to make decisions on Sundays as to what you want to commit to for the day, but Sunday games are not poorly attended at 1 pm and are right on par with Saturday games. I think you’re just upset that the schedule doesn’t operate based on your convenience and want to pretend it’s some real issue in terms of revenue generation when it isn’t.
Carolina has the money to keep Forbes if they want to, and they will.
We will get what the other conference thinks we value by contributing. I don’t believe members of either conference will voluntarily reduce their shares so we can join. We have to make the pie larger by at least as much as we will take out.
Then the ACC exit fee. Minimum $75 million. That is three years at $25 million less which is about the delta between conference payouts. We begin to be financially positive at best in year 4.
"Casual fans are not going to show up to watch 40 degree baseball".
Although the season ticket sales reached about 2k this season(according to ticket office0, we still have a lot of casual fans compared to lots of SEC programs. I expect many of them are selling 5k or. more season tickets,
I have to assume a national media member will ask Forbes directly about SCAR at an Omaha presser this week.
I think we all run into some issues when you have approximately 30 something home games. I prefer the early start time during the week, so I can get home since I have a 1.5 hour drive.
I have good seats, and it was all I could do to beg people to go to regular season weekend games I couldn’t make. The overwhelming interest in only in postseason. I do think having some kind of viewing deck for standing room would be beneficial.