Too bad Allen Fieldhouse isn’t like the nameless parking garage sitting next to it.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of Kansas University’s basketball teams, may be rich in tradition, but the adjacent parking garage does something the fieldhouse will never do it generates income all year long.
Of course, when Allen Fieldhouse does generate revenue, it generates oodles of it. Never enough oodles, though.
You probably know that Kansas University athletics department officials are committed to a plan to determine seating location based on donations to the Williams Fund.
The plan, revealed last month, won’t be implemented until the 2003-2004 season at the earliest, according to athletics director Bob Frederick, who hopes for a $1.4 million windfall during the first year.
Why will it take so long? Frederick says it’s because the ticket system needs to be computerized “to manage all of the information in it.” Too, he says, they haven’t decided “exactly how we’re going to do it.”
Slow and easy, Frederick has surely learned in the wake of the decision to drop men’s swimming and men’s tennis, is preferable to the high hard one.
News of the demise of men’s swimming and tennis was unexpected. No foreshadowing. No greasing the skids. And the reaction was predictably hostile.
By the time seat reapportionment comes to Allen Fieldhouse, season ticket holders affected will have had plenty of time to digest their fate.
Frederick does not want to stick it to people who were buying season basketball tickets back in the early ’80s when average crowds were in the 9,000 range.
“We’re grateful to the people who have supported us over the years,” Frederick said.
Yes, but where will he draw the lines? Will all the chairback seats, for instance, require the same donation? Or will donations be staggered based on distance from centercourt?
Without a doubt, the days of the media sitting courtside across from the benches are numbered. That’s prime seating. Why have the media there when you can sell that space for top dollar like they do in the NBA?
Some colleges have already removed the media from courtside and stuck them in the end zone. Ohio State’s new arena is configured that way. Soon the Big 12 Conference will have an arena with the media in the end zone, and the dominoes will begin to topple.
Will Kansas ever stick the media in the end zones and sell those courtside seats for a premium? Frederick says Kansas has no plans to do that, but never say never in the pursuit of revenue enhancement.
When Allen Fieldhouse was first built, media representatives were stationed in the upper level on the west side where those blue plastic chairback seats are today. I’m assuming two of those blue seats closest to the middle require a Williams Fund donation in the $10,000 range because that’s the going rate the highest in the Big 12, or twice as much as Iowa State.
Not in the U.S., though. Kentucky reportedly requires a $30,000 donation for two of its primo seats in Rupp Arena.
It’s a probability that when Kansas implements its computerized ticket system, seating will change every year based on the size of the donation. In other words, if you decide to match your donation from the previous year, you could be overtaken and moved to less desirable seats the next year.
Over the decades, enterprising athletics department personnel have squeezed just about every drop of revenue possible out of Allen Fieldhouse from steadily raising ticket prices to placing advertising signs in every nook and concession stands in every cranny.
Twenty years from now, Allen Fieldhouse will feature revenue enhancers we never would have dreamed of today. Pay-to-use restrooms? Advertising signs usurping the championship banners? Maybe even exit fees. Or an air tax. Everybody has to breathe, you know.
