OU, OSU already reaping benefits of luxury suites

By Bill Mayer     Sep 25, 2004

Kansas University has its luxury suites in Memorial Stadium, and one way or another they benefit the KU program and its financing structure. But it may be a long time before the Jayhawks realize the kind of loot from their box factory that mighty Oklahoma will reap this year.

Try $4 million, which is about the amount of profit the KU basketball program produces per annum. At OU, that level of income is from the special seating operation alone. Little wonder KU is hustling to boost its budget when it has to keep up with Joneses like that.

According to Bill Haisten of the Tulsa (Okla.) World, when the 2004 football season began, Oklahoma State had 31 suites at Boone Pickens Stadium while there were 63 for OU’s Memorial Stadium.

All suites at both places were sold out. So were the 2,030 new club seats at OSU (priced at $1,500 apiece for the season) and the 4,300 club seats at OU. Such premium seating has produced a revenue surge at both schools, writes Haisten.

As stated, OU this season will collect $4 million from suites alone. OSU has two levels of suite pricing. There’s a 22-seat Founder’s Suite available only on a 10-year commitment for $1 million. Then there’s a 14-seat Luxury Suite, available only on a five-year commitment for $300,000 paid out over time or $250,000 up front.

“As you see with fashion or housing or automobiles, there are people who will pay more for first-rate service,” says Okie State athletic director Harry Birdwell.

Surprising to many is that such costly derriere destinations are not dominated by corporate entities. At OSU, more than half the suites are leased by individuals while at OU more than three-fourths of the suites are held by individual customers.

How does KU build up to that kind of transfusion? Just win, baby. Both OU and OSU have been having highly productive years. Considering the intensity of the football virus in the land of the Sooners and Cowboys, choice stadium locations pull in the money. Kansas is trying to build a football program that basketball nuts can be proud of and excited about. It has the potential but potential means “they ain’t done it yet.”

Four or five more Jayhawk victories down the treacherous Big 12 Conference stretch could do wondrous things for the treasury with athletic director Lew Perkins and his people in action.

Shades of KU’s Allen Fieldhouse point system to trade on success and strike while the iron is hot, which OU and OSU football are right now and Kansas isn’t.

Not so long ago, OU and OSU fans were paying $20 per grid ticket. In 1999, a Sooner season ticket could be had for as little as $130. (Kansas has some $30 single tickets and the price for a full season was $185.)

“Many of those same (OSU and OU) fans now are writing big checks. At both schools, fans are required to make donations even before they can get in line for suits and club seats,” Haisten says. “For an OSU club seat, a $250 down payment was required.”

Adds Birdwell, the OSU director, “A few years ago, I would have said this is all more aggressive than I would have imagined possible. But for those people who prefer upscale amenities, this has become the norm rather than the exception. Not just at Oklahoma State, but around the country.”

In the Big 12, 11 stadiums have at least 30 suites. Texas A&M has the most (68), Iowa State has the fewest (23), and Kansas has 26. Texas has 52, Nebraska and Colorado 42 each.

So once the Kansas footballers win much more often, the full-court press for new revenue sources will shift from the fieldhouse to the Memorial Stadium venue. That process could be strongly in place before the 2005 season.

But again, you better win, folks.

Football coach Mark Mangino is eager to get a $20 million football complex around the south end of the stadium. To traditionalists, that sounds like a fracture of the kind of unity one might expect to be present in the current fieldhouse format, where everyone’s together and, presumably, pulling for each other.

But times have changed so drastically that the old “all for one and one for all” philosophy is hard to find. They may say it’s not about the money, but it’s about the money … nostalgia and camaraderie be damned.

¢

It’s no secret that the Kansas University public image is in disarray, partly because of controversial athletic department activities and a fading KU outreach from here to the west in the state, an area where Kansas State is faring so well. KU just made a hire, however, that could lead to a lot of good things — Paul Carttar, a Lawrence born-and-raised guy, a Lawrence High and a KU graduate with a long history of success. He’ll be heading up the university relations program that the high-priced and ill-cast Janet Murguia shepherded.

I first met Paul when he and Rob Seaver, as high schoolers, were doing a “Two Centuries Later” youth political column for the Journal-World some 30 years ago. It’s still one of the best locally prepared “civilian” pieces we’ve ever run, by contributors of any age.

Hope Paul and his minions don’t get too caught up in trivial pursuits like immediate alteration of the university seal and its Jayhawk mascot. They’re only symptoms of the problem, which runs far deeper. KU paid and is paying some unplugged outsiders big money to tell us how we ought to deal with each other and that’s a joke.

Finally KU has put in place a homegrown devotee with a deep and abiding desire to make things better. If chancellor Bob Hemenway was behind this caper, and wisely turns Paul loose, stick a big gold star on his performance chart for this week.

PREV POST

KU to release information on Perkins' contract

NEXT POST

6694OU, OSU already reaping benefits of luxury suites