DePaul basketball attendance well short of McPier projections

[Tugg Speedman]

DePaul basketball attendance well short of McPier projections

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130529/BLOGS04/130529794

DePaul University's men's basketball team would have to more than triple its annual attendance to meet the estimates made by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (McPier) for a new event center near McCormick Place.

Attendance at Blue Demons home games in suburban Rosemont has averaged around 2,900 over the past three years, according to Allstate Arena ticket records obtained by Crain's. That's about 35 percent of the school's reported numbers and 30 percent of what McPier officials are projecting for the new arena. The city plans to spend more than $100 million in tax money on the facility to give the near South Side an economic jolt.

This past season, the official average number of fans that went to DePaul home games at Allstate Arena was even lower: 2,610 based on the Ticketmaster scan system, which tracks exactly how many people come inside.

That is far below DePaul's reported average home game attendance of 7,938 over those 16 home games. Over the course of the entire season, the school reported total attendance at Allstate Arena at 127,020. The actual attendance was 41,771.

The discrepancy comes from the Blue Demons counting tickets rather than people. Their reported attendance, said an athletic department spokesman, includes "a couple thousand" tickets the school buys for each game to block out seats for students, who can go to any DePaul athletic event "free of charge" if they pay a quarterly $25 student activities fee. Many of those students, however, don't go to the games. The school also counts complimentary tickets given to charities and other groups toward their attendance number each game.

That practice of inflating attendance numbers based on ticket sales is not new among private institutions and professional teams, particularly those that own their facilities. The problem in this case, though, is that the economic impact study prepared by Mineola, N.Y.-based hospitality consulting firm HVS and commissioned by McPier to validate the demand for an event center appears to be based on DePaul's reported number, not the actual number.

That report projects an average attendance of 9,500 at DePaul men's basketball games in the new 10,000-seat arena, or 152,000 people over 16 games. That's more than 40 percent of the projected annual attendance of 370,000 for all events at the arena, including concerts, shows and conventions.

While the school would likely still pay to reserve student seats to games at the new arena, recent history suggests the butts won't actually be in the seats, nor would the fans be out and about spending money in the neighborhood.

That's not to suggest that moving the team to the city won't boost attendance, to an extent. More casual fans may flock to watch Big East basketball downtown, student attendance could improve, better recruiting could help and the planned new Green Line CTA stop at McCormick Place will ease the trip.

But finding an extra 7,000 people to consistently show up is a daunting task, especially for weeknight games in the winter when DePaul competes with the Bulls and Blackhawks for the Chicago fan dollar.

SMALLER ATTENDANCE HAS RIPPLE EFFECTS

A smaller attendance figure at DePaul games also would cut away estimates for food and beverage sales, merchandise purchases and parking revenue, which is collectively pegged at almost $1.9 million a year (or 36 percent of the arena's entire projected gross income), according to a pro forma operating statement prepared for DePaul by AECOM, a Los Angeles-based engineering and design management firm.

Sales of 22 luxury suites in the arena at $45,000 each per year and 300 club seats are also projected to account for near $500,000 in operating income.

The HVS report also identifies "non-Chicago metro-area residents making day trips" to attend DePaul basketball games as a key economic generator stemming from the event center. Based on the current attendance levels, those may be more difficult to come by than originally thought.

McPier officials have said the arena will break even on operating expenses in its first year and net $1 million after five years. Of course, they aren't exactly counting on that to make the $70 million they're contributing for construction through already-sold bonds worth it. It's important to remember that DePaul home games aren't tied to filling hotel rooms that will help pay off those McPier bonds. McPier officials have even conceded that the arena could be a "loss leader" to spur more activity and spending in the near South Side area.

McPier CEO Jim Reilly, who has maintained that the arena will be able to cover its own operating expenses, was not available for comment yesterday.

In the meantime, legislation that would enable the proposed event center to move forward is being introduced in Springfield this week and the goal for McPier remains the same: lining up as many events as possible in case Blue Demons games come up short.

[Tugg Speedman]

So Depaul averaged 2,600 PAYING customers last year.  Wow!!  I would not be surprised if MU women's team did better.

[Skatastrophy]

So Depaul averaged 2,600 PAYING customers last year.  Wow!!  I would not be surprised if MU women's team did better.

No, it says that's how many people showed up at the game and had their ticket scanned. I'm sure the official ticket numbers are significantly higher with all of the people that bought tickets not showing up.

[warriorchick]

Marquette was an away game for DePaul last year, but Notre Dame was a home game, and I bet that was pretty decently attended by Domer fans. That makes the attendance figures for the other games even worse.

Student attendance is pathetic.  I am not exaggerating when I say that when I went to the Marquette game at the Allstate in 2011-12, the pep band had more kids in it than then student section.  Can't say that I can totally blame them, though.  Who is going to slog out to Rosemont on a school night to watch a sucky team?

[Tugg Speedman]

No, it says that's how many people showed up at the game and had their ticket scanned. I'm sure the official ticket numbers are significantly higher with all of the people that bought tickets not showing up.

No it's worse ....

The discrepancy comes from the Blue Demons counting tickets rather than people. Their reported attendance, said an athletic department spokesman, includes "a couple thousand" tickets the school buys for each game to block out seats for students, who can go to any DePaul athletic event "free of charge" if they pay a quarterly $25 student activities fee. Many of those students, however, don't go to the games. The school also counts complimentary tickets given to charities and other groups toward their attendance number each game.

[Galway Eagle]

Marquette was an away game for DePaul last year, but Notre Dame was a home game, and I bet that was pretty decently attended by Domer fans. That makes the attendance figures for the other games even worse.

Student attendance is pathetic.  I am not exaggerating when I say that when I went to the Marquette game at the Allstate in 2011-12, the pep band had more kids in it than then student section.  Can't say that I can totally blame them, though.  Who is going to slog out to Rosemont on a school night to watch a sucky team?

Actually that ND game sold out.  They had this huge event called Demon Day that a ton of give aways and they got a big number of students.  And what was the effect? Suddenly a terrible team took ND to OT after leading most the game.  

[bigmeech]

You mean politicians manipulated information to get what they want?!

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!!

[T-Bone]

Can't say that I can totally blame them, though.  Who is going to slog out to Rosemont on a school night to watch a sucky team?

Exactly. Can't imagine it will be much better in year two at the new place being a bit closer.

[chr31ter]

Exactly. Can't imagine it will be much better in year two at the new place being a bit closer.

If they still stink?  Sure.

If they're something somewhat better than the worst major Division I program in the country... could be a different story.

[Tugg Speedman]

The lunatic left, which is largely Rahm's base, is hopping mad at the Depaul deal.

I hate it too but now that I see The Nation is this worked up about it, I might have to reconsider.

--------------


Rahm Emanuel's Zombie Pigs vs. Chicago's Angry Birds

http://www.thenation.com/blog/174478/rahm-emmanuels-zombie-pigs-vs-chicagos-angry-birds#ixzz2VA2slA9f

My kids are into Angry Birds, a game they love for the same reason I once obsessively played Super Mario Brothers: its appeal is incomprehensible to the adults around them. This inscrutable game, however, has one essential truth: you have some pissed off birds compelled by rage to put down some zombie-looking pigs. After a sad effort to play the game myself, I had my own epiphany: this game is actually a metaphor for the city of Chicago. Please bear with me. Angry Birds is more Chicago than the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field or deep-dish pizza. The lunacy, the violence, the plethora of increasingly crazed pigs and those fierce feathered fowl all represent the political actors in a city that’s gone over the edge.

It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena. This is part of a mammoth redevelopment project on South Lakeshore Drive consisting of a convention center anchored by an arena for a non-descript basketball team that has gone 47-111 over the last five years. It’s also miles away from DePaul’s campus. These aren’t the actions of a mayor. They’re the actions of a mad king.

If you want to understand why Mayor Rahm has approval ratings to rival Rush Limbaugh in Harlem, you can point to priorities like these. The school closures are taking place entirely in communities of color while the city’s elite feed with crazed abandon at an increasingly sapped trough. As Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teachers Union chief who led a victorious strike last September fueled by rage at Mayor Rahm, said, “When the mayor claims he is facing unprecedented budget problems, he has a choice to make. He is choosing between putting our communities first or continuing the practice of handing out millions of public dollars to private operators, even in the toughest of times.”

It’s hardly just the labor-left of Chicago pointing out how breathtakingly heartless these priorities are. Rick Telander, the lead sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, penned a piece subtly titled, “With Rahm’s DePaul plan, we’ve entered a new arena of stupidity.” After making clear that DePaul’s team is hardly a magnet for city hoops fans, Telander wrote, “But forget that. Guess who will have to cough up about $100 million to build the thing for the private Catholic university of 25,000, through bonds and the usual sneak attacks of wallet-siphonage—Yes! Taxpayers! Ta-dah!”

The fact that Rick Telander wrote these words matters. The wine is out of the bottle and the horse is out of the barn. In 2013, it’s no longer a few of us cap-wearing Cassandras shouting that the end is nigh if we keep hollowing city budgets to pay for these monuments to corporate welfare. It’s Rick Telander. It’s the Chicago Sun-Times sports page. It’s all of us.

It must be pointed out that this deal, even by the standards of shady stadium operations, has people scratching their heads. Building an arena for a third-tier college basketball program as the heart of a new convention center? Was his second best idea a new snack called Nuts & Gum? I spoke to Neil DaMause, the co-author of the bible on stadium boondoggles, Field of Schemes, to get his thoughts. He said,

I’ve seen dumber things than a mayor offering to spend $173 million in tax money on a building for a private college that already has its pick of several arenas to play in—but not much dumber…. I can’t for the life of me imagine what Emanuel thinks Chicago is likely to get out of this deal, unless he really thinks that convention planners are just waiting for a 12,000-seat arena to hold their plenary sessions in, at which point they’ll start throwing wadded-up hundred-dollar bills at any Chicagoan they can find.

DeMause is right. The only explanation for this is that Rahm is scratching someone’s back in the DePaul Catholic hierarchy of Chicago. This is power politics the likes of which Chicago has honed into a crude, low art form, with the myriad public officials behind bars to prove it. In this case, the hottest rumor is that approval of legalized gambling is on the horizon and the convention center’s locale will be its epicenter. The arena is, in effect, a Trojan Horse for a casino.

If true, Chicagoans should shudder. Even better, they should take a field trip four hours east to Detroit. The Motor City has gambling, and I’ve been to their casinos. If you ever want to see exhausted families spend their last dollars in hopes to make enough to last the month, go to a Detroit casino. That’s the future Rahm Emanuel dreams about for the working people of Chicago. The difference now is that the pigs aren’t feeding at an overflowing trough. They’re feeding on the last grizzled meat sticking to our bones. There’s simply not enough slop to go around and people are fed up with being fed upon.

The Chicago Teachers Union strike from last September showed that the priorities of Rahm can be beaten back. The same rage that fueled their struggle animates those following this stadium swindle. I spoke with Alison McKenna, an adjunct professor in social welfare policy at DePaul. She said,

I have nothing against basketball and nothing against DePaul. But Rahm Emanuel and his upside-down priorities disgust me. In a deeply segregated city like Chicago, the gun violence that’s been all over the national news is the result of systematically tearing apart communities. Gentrification is not the answer for this city. The answer is decent jobs, social services, quality affordable housing, access to health care and fully funded schools, not another round of corporate welfare.

Rahm may have an army of zombie pigs who know how to do nothing but feed, but each and every neighborhood facing violence, school closures, clinic closures and public graft has a slew of increasingly angry birds. The people are long done playing Rahm’s game.

Who’s bankrolling the Center for American Progress, and what are they getting in return? Read Ken Silverstein’s report.

[Coleman]

If you know anything aboout Chicago politics, Rahm's base is hardly the lunatic left. He's a Democrat but in a city and state full of Democrats Rahm is pragmatic and pro-Rahm before any sort of progressive idealism. Not unlike his predecessor, he will make deals with whoever he has to, to do what he thinks is in Chicago's and his own best interest. He has angered liberals just as often as conservatives.

FWIW, lots of people on both sides of the aisle think the arena is a bad idea. Not everything has to be split down partisan lines, as much as some people would like to divide the world that way.

[Litehouse]

Not that I think this whole thing is a good idea, but it seems all the articles bashing this plan are mischaracterizing the structure of the whole deal.  They describe it as the city giving DePaul $100M to build their own arena.  The arena will be owned by the city (or McPier), and DePaul will just rent it about 30 days a year.  It could just as easily be described as DePaul giving the city $70M to build a publicly owned arena, and agreeing to rent it out for events about 10% of the available days.

[Tugg Speedman]

What else is new??  For years the media mischaracterized Ricketts plan on Wrigley as a "give away of taxpayer money."

[Dawson Rental]

Not that I think this whole thing is a good idea, but it seems all the articles bashing this plan are mischaracterizing the structure of the whole deal.  They describe it as the city giving DePaul $100M to build their own arena.  The arena will be owned by the city (or McPier), and DePaul will just rent it about 30 days a year.  It could just as easily be described as DePaul giving the city $70M to build a publicly owned arena, and agreeing to rent it out for events about 10% of the available days.

McPier is its own municipal corporation with mega bond issuing authority.  Navy Pier and the McCormick Convention Center Campus which are both located in Chicago are owned by it.  Anytime it builds anything it adds revenue producing property to Chicago with no investment by the city required.  Any mayor that can get McPier to build anything that would bring revenue producing events and tourist and/or convention dollars to the city would be insane not to push for it.

[GGGG]

McPier is its own municipal corporation with mega bond issuing authority.  Navy Pier and the McCormick Convention Center Campus which are both located in Chicago are owned by it.  Anytime it builds anything it adds revenue producing property to Chicago with no investment by the city required.  Any mayor that can get McPier to build anything that would bring revenue producing events and tourist and/or convention dollars to the city would be insane not to push for it.

So if McPier cannot meet the revenue projections and is about to default on the bonds, is the City the "co-signor" on the loan?

This is why some of the opposition to this plan has confused me.  Is the City of Chicago and its taxpayers on the hook for anything but the TIF financing?  (Which would have to happen with any developer anyway right?)

[Dawson Rental]

So if McPier cannot meet the revenue projections and is about to default on the bonds, is the City the "co-signor" on the loan?

This is why some of the opposition to this plan has confused me.  Is the City of Chicago and its taxpayers on the hook for anything but the TIF financing?  (Which would have to happen with any developer anyway right?)

Nope.  McPier goes back to the state legislature and says; "We need a bailout."  And the state probably ponies up with a casino, rather than cash it does not have.  If McPier gets the casino first, then there should be no worries about not having the moolah.

[GGGG]

Nope.  McPier goes back to the state legislature and says; "We need a bailout."  And the state probably ponies up with a casino, rather than cash it does not have.  If McPier gets the casino first, then there should be no worries about not having the moolah.

So this creates no liability for taxpayers of the City of Chicago, and only for the State of Illinois should they default on their bonds....plus there is a ready-made solution in place their too.

This doesn't sound like that big of a deal to me....I mean, the bonding was already authorized right?

[Dawson Rental]

So this creates no liability for taxpayers of the City of Chicago, and only for the State of Illinois should they default on their bonds....plus there is a ready-made solution in place their too.

This doesn't sound like that big of a deal to me....I mean, the bonding was already authorized right?

Right.  Technically, the liability is for McPier which has no citizens to tax.  The worst case scenario for Chicago is probably that the legislature doesn't agree to the casino unless McPier gets a hotel tax increase on all Chicago hotels.  Now that I think about it, this whole deal might be Rahm's play to get a casino sooner.

[MarquetteDano]

Not everything has to be split down partisan lines, as much as some people would like to divide the world that way.

Here, here.  If only more people thought this way we could find a way to get sensible government.