Razorback Ticket Sales Increase to Highest Level in a Decade

Houston Nutt’s Arrival Leads to UA Economic Boom

The enthusiam that Razorback fans have for Houston Nutt, the team’s new head football coach, is creating an economic boom for the University of Arkansas athletic program.

Ticket sales for home football games are the highest in a decade. Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville is within about 600 tickets of selling out of all of its 50,000 seats. War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock has about 1,200 seats available. If Arkansas sold every seat at both stadiums this year, it would raise almost $6.5 million. The total UA athletic budget is $26 million.

“I don’t think a new coach has impacted our ticket sales this much since Lou Holtz,” says Rick Schaeffer, the UA sports information director. “The people of Arkansas, for the first time in a decade, have hope.”

Schaeffer says the university began taking ticket orders in January, less than a month after Nutt was hired as head football coach. Officials hope to sell out Razorback Stadium before the first game Sept. 5 against the University of Southwestern Louisiana. The university hasn’t sold out a game in Fayetteville since 1985, he says, the year a 10,000-seat upper deck was opened on the west side.

“We’ve never been this close to selling out at this time of year,” he says. “People are buying tickets before the season begins instead of waiting until we win.”

Nutt declined to be interviewed for this story, saying through Schaeffer that he did not want to take credit for the upsurge in ticket sales.

But it has been obvious since the former Hog quarterback’s hiring in mid-December as head coach that fan interest has soared. For the past seven months leading up to the start of fall practice, the ultra-enthusiastic Nutt has criss-crossed the state speaking to various clubs and Hog supporters, and the fans seem to be responding.

Mark Scobey, ticket manager for the university, says ticket sales are 10 percent higher than last year. He expects the Sept. 26 game in Fayetteville against the University of Alabama will be a sellout because Alabama fans have bought 8,000 tickets. Sales also have been high for the University of Kentucky game in Little Rock and the University of Mississippi game in Fayetteville, he says.

Ticket sales are the single largest source of income for the athletic program. A sellout of Razorback Stadium at $20 a ticket raises $900,000. Tickets for the Alabama game are $25 each and a sellout will total $1.1 million at the gate.

War Memorial Stadium has 53,727 seats. A sellout of the stadium at $20 a ticket raises more than $1 million. Tickets for the season-ending game with Lousiana State University on Nov. 27 are $25. Selling out that game will raise almost $1.4 million.

The brisk sale of tickets follows a three-year decline under the reign of former head coach Danny Ford. Last year, attendance at Razorback games fell to an average of about 35,000 fans, the lowest since 1964 when the Hogs won a national championship but the capacity of both stadiums was much smaller. The university has had as much as $1 million in unsold tickets during several of the past few seasons.

Organized attempts to promote the sport and enhance the game experience failed to stop the decline. In 1994, the university began sponsoring food vendors and live music before Fayetteville games. Attendance reached an average of 47,000 people per game. The following year, Arkansas surprised everyone and won the Southeastern Conference West Division, and the average attendance climbed to 51,200 people per game, the second highest in Razorback history. But, after a disappointing finish to the ’95 season and a 4-7 mark the next season, attendance dropped in 1996 to an average of 44,600 people per game.

Alltel Corp. joined the promotional effort last year by sponsoring the Alltel Trough, a large tent outside the stadium where arriving fans could buy plates of barbecue pork for $5. Also, Little Rock disc jockey Craig O’Neill began announcing the games both in Fayetteville and Little Rock. Despite the promotions, attendance fell to an all-time low as the Razorbacks had their third losing season in four years.

The promotions will continue this year in Fayetteville but with some changes. The food tents will move to the lawn in front of the new poultry science building across Maple Street from the stadium. The sponsors also will add an autograph tent where fans can meet current and past Razorback athletes; more radio stations will provide live coverage; and more area restaurants will be represented, including Papa John’s pizza, Corky’s barbeque, A.Q. Chicken House, Outback Steak House and Jose’s Mexican Restaurant and Club.

Two hours before each game, the football players will walk through the area on their way to the stadium — a tradition already incorporated at several SEC schools. An hour before the game, there will be a pep rally, and 45 minutes before the game the Razorback Marching Band will parade down Stadium Drive.

Matt Shanklin, director of marketing for men’s athletics, says the enthusiasm is higher this year than at any other time since the promotions began.

“The difference is Houston Nutt,” Shanklin says. “He’s a marketing director’s dream. He exudes enthusiasm and it’s contagious.”

The pregame promotions cost the university about $2,500 per game, Shanklin says. Some of the cost is recouped from sponsorship fees and rent paid by the food vendors, he says. However, the university would sponsor the events even without the extra income, he says.

“It’s an investment,” Shanklin says. “We want to start a new tradition. It’s not just putting on a football game. It’s putting on a daylong event.”

Football ticket sales and guarantees — the amount the university receives for playing in other stadiums — contributed $5.6 million to the athletic department’s $26 million budget last year.

The second-largest single source of income for the department is distributions made by the SEC to all its member schools. The conference collects money from television broadcasts, bowl games and basketball tournaments and divides it among the schools. The university’s share of those contributions was about $5.1 million last year, the most the conference ever has distributed, says Charles Bloom, assistant commissioner for the conference in Birmingham, Ala.

Basketball provides the next largest source of income for the athletic department. Last year, ticket sales at Bud Walton Arena totaled about $4.7 million. Bud Walton Arena has about 19,000 seats and has been sold out for every regular-season game since it opened.

Football and basketball are the university’s only profitable sports.

The Razorback Foundation provides at least $2.4 million to the budget each year. The foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that raises money to support the athletic programs. Annual contributions to the foundation total about $8 million. (See related story on Page 10)

Another $1 million comes from contracts to broadcast the football games on radio through the Arkansas Razorback Sports Network and preseason basketball games on local television stations.

Game programs provide more than $500,000 each year, both from the sale of the programs to fans and advertising space to local companies.

The university’s other sports add a combined total of about $150,000 per year to the athletic department’s budget.

Concession and novelty sales total about $50,000 per game. Concessions at football and basketball games are provided by The Swanson Corp. of Omaha, Neb. The company leases the concession space and gives a percentage of sales to the university, says Lou Sinos, vice president of the company’s concessions management division. Swanson has similar arrangements with Oklahoma State University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Northern Iowa and the College of William and Mary.

Traditionally, enthusiasm has been high when the university hires a new football coach and that translates into more money for the athletic program. Holtz’s arrival in 1977 boosted fan enthusiasm, as Schaeffer notes, but it came during the zenith of the football program when fans were turning out by the thousands for spring intrasquad games and the team was regularly playing in major bowl games.

Fan frenzy about Razorback basketball was just beginning under then-coach Eddie Sutton.

Hog fans appear to have become a little fickle about football in the past 21 years, though they’ve had coaching changes in 1984, 1990,1992 and 1993 to rekindle the enthusiasm.

Still, statistics show that the team has to win to keep the fan support. Even under one of the university’s more popular and successful coaches, Ken Hatfield, attendance began to slide with the team’s win-loss record. After a record average attendace in 1985 when the team went 10-2, the attendance dropped in 1986 when the team’s record slipped to 9-3 and again the following the year when the team finished the season 9-4 after very high expectations.

Attendance picked back up again in Hatfield’s last two years when the team won the Southwest Conference title and reached the Cotton Bowl. Hatfield, who feuded with Broyles through the last half of his UA coaching career, left in January 1990 for Clemson University. Arkansas’ record since Hatfield’s departure is 38-51-2.

“Houston Nutt is driven to restore the program,” Schaeffer says. “It’s going to be fun again. Now, we have to win some games.”