Each year students pay about $250 of their dedicated student activity fee to attend all athletic events hosted on the University of Idaho campus. The annual cost to host those events is more than $600,000, which makes student fee dollars seem like a drop in the $18 million athletics budget bucket.
“The student fee money that we get — about $2.32 million … doesn’t cover all of that but we appreciate the money,” said Matt Kleffner, senior associate athletic director.
The money to host athletic events comes out of the multi-million dollar budget that is funded by a number of entities. Funding for the athletics department includes ticket sales for events, guarantees (the money paid by other institutions to host UI teams for their own athletic events), student fees and direct state government and institutional support. Athletics also receives a large portion of its budget from donors, the NCAA/Western Athletic Conference, media rights, concessions, advertisements and sponsorship, endowment, and other smaller items such as parking and program/novelty sales.
“We basically have all this money that goes into a pot and out of that pot we pay all these expenses,” Kleffner said. “What we do is we tend to take student fees because they are student-related and tie them to the student-related expenses of the game expenses and equipment and the team travel because those are the most directly effective to the students. Other than that everything else just kind of goes into the pot and it all comes out.”
The “pot” is divided among student scholarships, guarantees UI pays to other teams, coaching and administration salary, team expenses, spirit groups and anything else the athletics department might have to pay for during the fiscal year. More than $600,000 covers the cost of about 70 athletic events that are hosted on campus each year, and Kleffner said $340,000 of that goes back to UI.
Four categories make up the budget for athletic events hosted on campus — a facility fee for the use of the ASUI Kibbie Dome, other Kibbie expenses, additional expenses unrelated to the Kibbie and officials for the games. For football and basketball, these expenses total more than $500,000 in year while swim meets, volleyball and soccer games and track meets make up a relatively small portion of the event costs budget.
Football
The total event cost for football games is almost $100,000 higher than the next most expensive sport, men’s basketball, despite the fact that the team hosts less than half of the regular season games on the UI campus.
The Idaho Vandals hosted five games during the 2011 season, one less than half of the total season games, and will do the same for the 2012 season to secure more money in guarantees from teams that want to host more events on their home campuses.
“If you look at last season, we only played five games here,” Kleffner said. “That’s because we needed to go play another money game on the road. So we went to go play North Carolina that we pay probably $200,000 to fly the team back there, but we bring home $800,000.”
The team also saves money by hosting one less game.
“We’re at our max now. We’re really at an unsustainable level,” Kleffner said. “You need to be six on the road, six at home — give yourself a chance to win. You just need to have that.”
Kleffner said he has budgeted for $253,000 in event costs for the fall 2012 football season. Athletics pays a $2,000 facility fee per game for the full-day use of the Kibbie Dome, plus a season total of $85,000 in additional Kibbie expenses.
Tyson Drew, Kibbie Dome manager for University Support Services, said the money for these expenses is billed to the athletics department and passes through University Support Services where it is then distributed for expenses that are hired out by the university.
“What we charge athletics is just that pass-through. What money we have in surplus, if we have any, just goes back into the dome for things like repairs and upgrades,” Drew said.
These expenses include things such as Crowd Management Services — an external agency that provides crowd management personnel, Kibbie labor, sound and video systems in the dome and other small costs such as EMT services, tables, maintenance and portable outhouses.
“The facility fee covers wear and tear on the facility. After every football game we have to go in and repair a couple of benches, especially in the student section,” Drew said. “It also covers the supplies that we use, so like garbage bags, toilet paper, paper towels. It just kind of covers facility use and consumption.”
The athletics department will also pay approximately $90,000 in other seasonal expenses for football games to other UI departments such as Parking and Transportation Services and video and event staff.
The final budget item, officials, is an expense the athletics department has no control over. For the coming season, the department expects to pay $68,000 for football officials.
“This is money that gets assigned by the WAC. We don’t hire our own, they just say ‘this is who’s coming, this is how much you have to pay them,'” Kleffner said.
Men’s Basketball
Although the basketball team plays more games on the UI campus, the cost to host these events is much less than football expenses. The total budget for men’s basketball events is $156,600.
The first half of the season is played in Memorial Gym which does not charge the athletics department a facility fee to host games. For the games hosted in the Cowan Spectrum, the facility fee is lower than for football because the games do not utilize the entire dome for a whole day.
“We don’t have people playing tennis in the background at football games, that sort of thing,” Kleffner said.
The facility fee for these games is between $300 and $600 per game for a season total of approximately $6,600 in facility fees. Other Kibbie Dome expenses for these games are budgeted to total $59,100 and includes the costs involved with setting up the Cowan Spectrum. Athletics pays $6,400 in other UI departmental expenses, and $84,500 for officials.
Women’s Basketball
Women’s basketball incurs many of the same costs that men’s basketball does, but saves money due to smaller crowds that require the Kibbie Dome to hire fewer Crowd Management employees.
“It just kind of depends on the event,” Drew said. “If we know we’re going to have a larger crowd we’ll ask for more people from CMS and for other events we won’t have as many.”
Athletics expects to pay $5,400 in facility fees for FY2013 and an additional $38,400 for other Kibbie expenses. Athletics will also pay $3,200 to other UI departments and $73,500 for officials.
The women’s basketball event cost budget is expected to be $120,500 for the 2012-2013 season.
Volleyball and Soccer
Events not hosted in the Kibbie Dome save the athletics department the expenses associated with the dome. These events do not cost the department a facility fee because they are hosted at Memorial Gym for volleyball and Guy Wick’s Field for soccer.
The Kibbie expenses tied to these events include chairs, tables, security, maintenance and other labor costs for the facilities they are hosted at. For volleyball, the total cost for these extra expenses is $23,900 and only $10,000 for soccer games.
Athletics pays an additional $1,700 to other UI departments for volleyball games, and no additional money for soccer games.
“These really aren’t big ticket events,” Kleffner said. “They’re free to the public and there’s just not as much that goes into them.”
Volleyball officials cost the department $26,900, while soccer officials are only $8,800. The total combined budget for these two sports is less than $100,000. Athletics budgets $52,500 for a season of volleyball games and $18,800 for soccer.
Other
Tennis, golf, swimming and track cost the university very little to host because they do not require many of the expenses that other sports do.
“We also have small amounts for swimming and tennis and track and golf — we don’t even have a home event for golf, but (those amounts) are relatively nothing,” Kleffner said.
Benefits for UI
While the cost to host athletic events on campus may seem high, more than half of the money spent to host these events goes back into the university in other places, Kleffner said.
“Not only do we write a check back to the university, but we bring in money from all the other student athletes — we bring in a lot of money to the university,” Kleffner said.
Kleffner said budgeting for athletic events is not an easy process.
“I get an estimate from all these different people,” Kleffner said. “I get an estimate from the Kibbie on what they’re going to charge us for all the different things, all the different areas… I don’t just sit down and say ‘OK here’s a number’ and increase it a little bit each year.”
Students pay their activity fee every year but many neglect to attend games. Kleffner said the most important aspect of hosting athletic events on campus is student attendance.
“We have probably 40 percent of our seats for students,” Kleffner said. “To be honest, you guys — the students — are the reason, you create the environment that makes everything work.”
Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected]