While champagne corks pop all over town toasting the opening of U.S. Bank Stadium, there is one group that ought to be biting their collective fingernails.
The new stadium will ensure sellout crowds at gaudy ticket prices for Vikings games this season—inflating both the revenue streams and value of this town’s NFL franchise. The facility will also be used for all kinds of events in the coming months—from small parties to marquee concerts, from college baseball to rollerblading—and adds to the ballyhoo of this being “the people’s stadium.” A near capacity crowd could be present Wednesday night when the stadium hosts its first sports event, the soccer match between Chelsea FC and AC Milan.
The stadium’s design and features are so impressive the public is willing to buy tickets for tours of the building, while setting calendars months in advance for dates that aren’t first choices. Heck, U.S. Bank Stadium is such a success the Star Tribune reported last Friday the arena’s completion is contributing to a construction slowdown in Minneapolis.
There are a lot of winners gathering under the U.S. Bank Stadium big top, but one major loser is the Gophers. The University of Minnesota’s football program has mostly played second fiddle to the Vikings in this market for more than 50 years. The opening of U.S. Bank Stadium only widens the gap between the two entities that compete for the love and financial support of this state’s football fans.
The opinion here is the Gophers are always best positioned to market their product when playing their home games in the same facility as used by the Vikings. The Gophers broke their co-occupancy of the Metrodome with the Vikings awhile ago with the decision to build TCF Bank Stadium. At one time there had been discussion of the Gophers and Vikings sharing a stadium on the University’s Minneapolis campus, but U leaders didn’t want the mega-size required of an NFL facility and the busy traffic brought to campus.
TCF Bank Stadium opened in 2009. It’s a nice stadium, and the facility certainly trumps most of the dinosaur-aged football homes on other college campuses. But the facility is also problematic for the Gophers. Let’s count the ways.
U.S. Bank Stadium is going to be praised for some time as one of the most luxurious and fan-friendly stadiums in the world. TCF Bank Stadium can’t compete with that reality and image. Too bad because word is Gophers’ ticket sales are lagging after last year’s 6-7 season (2-6 in Big Ten games), and the loss of head coach Jerry Kill—the face of the program to Minnesota football fans.
There’s such a buzz about the new stadium it’s likely the Gophers could sell out multiple games this season if playing in that building. It’s probably fair to say every game on the schedule would attract more paying customers downtown than will show up at TCF Bank Stadium.
But it’s not just this fall and the next couple seasons where the Gophers and their fans will lose out for not signing on with the Vikings in a shared stadium. That facility has about 13,000 more seats for football than TCF Bank Stadium. Every game the Gophers play in the future that has high ticket demand will be a reminder of how many more fans could have been accommodated and U Athletic Department revenues generated by making U.S. Bank Stadium home.
Another problem is TCF Bank Stadium is an open-air facility, while U.S. Bank Stadium has a roof. Watching games outdoors is appealing to most fans in September, a little less so in October and then problematic for many ticket buyers and holders in November and beyond. The cold and snow didn’t keep Vikings fans away for late season games when the NFL team played at the Bank while their new palace was being built, but the Gophers don’t command that kind of passion and loyalty.
Look, for example, what happened in November of 2014 when eventual national champion Ohio State came to the Bank. It was a bitterly cold day on November 15, and despite the Ohio State brand name and the Gophers still being in the hunt for the Big Ten’s West Division championship, attendance was 45,778—about 7,000 under stadium capacity. The weather kept a lot of customers away, but in a covered facility the game likely would have attracted 55,000 to 60,000 fans.
Returning football to campus was promoted as a move to boost interest in the program. The results have been mixed. The Gophers didn’t sell out a single game in 2014, but last year—with the promise of Kill having his best team and playing a glitzy home schedule—Minnesota sold out multiple games and averaged a TCF Bank Stadium season-best ever 52,354 fans.
In the Gophers’ last seven seasons in the Metrodome they averaged 47,926 fans per game. During the first seven seasons since returning to campus—supposedly boosted by the honeymoon impact of a new home—the average is 48,980. Of course team success has a major impact on attendance, but during the last seven years in the dome and the first seven on campus Minnesota’s Big Ten records are nearly identical, 21-35 and 20-36. The conclusion is the Gophers didn’t gain much box office sales from being in their new facility.
More than 35 years ago the Gophers were struggling to draw fans when playing outdoors in Memorial Stadium but attendance jumped playing indoors at the Metrodome, their shared home with the Vikings. The first six seasons at the dome saw the Gophers averaging 54,898 fans. In the six prior years at Memorial Stadium the average was 40,872.
It’s all but certain the Gophers could earn a big growth in attendance in the immediate seasons ahead if their home was downtown, only a few miles from campus. Public season ticket sales for 2016, likely to finish behind last year, no doubt would be a higher number in U.S. Bank Stadium. Student season ticket sales have been a disappointment at TCF Bank Stadium, despite the hype that an on-campus stadium would bring more undergraduates to games from nearby dorms, fraternities and sororities. Truth is the Gophers drew as many or more students to games at the beer-friendly Metrodome.
The Athletic Department is reportedly still working on paying down the debt of the $288.5 million cost of TCF Bank Stadium. At the dome the Gophers paid no rent and you can be sure the U would have been given a sweetheart deal to play in the $1.1 billion people’s stadium that includes large subsidies from the state of Minnesota and city of Minneapolis.
I didn’t favor a return to campus for outdoor football. I thought the U could put $288 million to better use while trying to build an elite Big Ten football program. Like how? Oh, maybe for a $190 million Athletes Village that the U is struggling to finance now. Or, paying $6 million or more annually to the best head football coach money could buy—plus dramatically expanding the budget for assistant coaches. The right coaches have far more to do with attracting the best players and building winning teams than bricks and mortar for stadiums, or practice facilities.
The long-term benefits of an on-campus, small capacity open-air stadium were over sold as a benefit to Gophers football. Yes, the Gophers have their own home and can retain all the revenues, but they receive all the expenses too. Yes, it’s nice to walk across campus to see a game but how many folks buy tickets to soak up that part of the college atmosphere? Yes, the Bank is used to host events like banquets, commencements, concerts and soccer but the stadium also sits on valuable land that the ever expanding Minneapolis campus could put to full-time academic use.
This season the Gophers have home games against (in order) Oregon State, Indiana State, Colorado State, Iowa, Rutgers, Purdue and Northwestern. Iowa fans are riding high after last year’s Big Ten West Division title and trip to the Rose Bowl. Our friends from the south will make sure the Bank has at least one sellout next fall.
Too bad because it didn’t have to be that way. U.S. Bank Stadium has the image, the amenities and the roof, plus one mega tenant in the Vikings. The Gophers, trying to compete against pro sports with a fragile product and small fanbase, can see the new building from campus but they’re on the outside looking in.
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