I didn’t know where to put this but it’s something I’ve wondered about for a while: buy games. Obviously, they are best known in football and basketball, but what about other sports? Could we schedule UConn for a buy game in women’s hoops? What about Sam Houston State in equestrian? (I have no idea if they have a good program, just would assume the number one team would likely be somewhere in Texas.) Help!
Not really - baseball would be the only other one to actually have any meaningful revenue attached and that’s really just vs SEC (if you get a 3 game set it could mean series attendance of 20-30k+ but payout is still lean compared to FB/MBB). Big time womens hoops can pay, but similar to baseball and not significantly more than travel expenses (unless those are really low).
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Much thanks! I’m guessing none for hockey then.
You think 10,000+ would come to see UT play Miami in Oxford?
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I don’t know if 4 people would. I was just curious about buy games and how they work.
My understanding is you could buy games in whatever sport you wanted. There are instances of schools reporting income/expenses around Guarantees in numerous sports outside FB/MBB. It’s just not very prevalent because of budget and post-season qualification systems in other sports. WBB is growing more by the year in Guarantees though.
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Thanks much!
Thered be a line coming down I75 to I70 to St St 127 to St Rt 73 to see the Toledo Rockets play at Miami
No - but they may in Knoxville which is what I thought we were talking about.
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Yeah, that makes sense. Don’t know why we’d have a buy game in Oxford….my bad
We have buy games for FCS football and DIII basketball though, right? Not like we’re even close to seven figure-paydays, but we’re not getting Robert Morris or Spalding for free.
Rule of thumb, we have buy games for anyone who comes and doesn’t get a return. Iirc, Spalding got around $90k to play at Oxford. FCS schools are getting around $125k-325k. Future schedules typically releases the details for football games.
For reference, Holy Cross is getting a $320k guarantee from us
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Spalding got 3k.
Many of the game contracts get posted here:
https://miamioh.edu/athletics/public-records-contracts/index.html
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This is fascinating. The idea of paying good money to get a team to Oxford no one wants to watch is mind blowing although I guess the big schools feel that way about it as well.
Good catch! D1 buy games among mid majors are around that $100k mark. Thanks!