Gators Feeling Pinch from Poor Economy
This is the third consecutive year where the University of Florida Athletic Association will donate million to the University of Floriday. This is common for the UAA to donate funds back to the university to show their support for continued success outside of the realm of athletics.
However, not everything is as pleasant as we might like to think. It was announced earlier this week that during the annual June budget meeting, the UAA’s Board of Directors decided to authorize 0,000 from reserve budgetary funds to help cover the donation. This is also paired with the fact that the UAA is engaging in a very active marketing campaign throughout Gainesville and other localities to help publicize the availability of season tickets – including premium (high priced) seating!
University of Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley commented on the upcoming budget: ”If you look at this budget, you’ll see our expenses increased very little this year. Our staff and our coaches did an excellent job on holding the line on expenses, understanding this is a challenging economic environment for everybody, certainly for the campus, but also for UAA. Our revenue increased very, very little. We did have a small ticket price increase a year ago that generated some significant dollars (.3 million). But we froze an increase in booster (fees) as well.”
This comment comes as a result of UAA officials projecting a budget increase for 2012-13 of less than 1% overall. This will raise the budget to around .7 million and the athletic department is very adamant that there are no raises for staff as a result of this budget increase.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that “Gator Boosters generates one-third of UF’s operating funds, projected to be .8 million in the upcoming year. SEC revenue from bowl games, TV contracts and championships (.5 million) and football and basketball ticket sales (.1 million and .2 million respectively) make up a large portion of the budget.”
The marketing campaign appears to be working marginally well. It began three weeks ago and already the Gators have sold roughly 1,200 season tickets. With this said, the university is still about 250 season tickets short of last season’s total season ticket sales.
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