I just turned on the Birmingham Bowl after Harris' commitment. There may be 5k people in the stands based on a sideline view during the Cincy QB's scramble for a score.
How do these 3rd tier bowls get justified?
Does it come out of the marketing budget for the city in the hopes of future tourism? I'm struggling to figure it out.
They get a bunch of people like us with nothing better to do to turn on the TV and watch.
It's the dead season for tourism. They get the team and the officials hotels and meals comped. In return even if they get five to ten thousand fans, school officials, band members, etc. to show up they more than break even and it gives them some cash flow to pay the employees at a time they normally wouldn't be working.
Like the teams themselves they get a chance to get some low cost promotion of the city. Get a bunch of TV exposure, a bunch of articles in the local papers about the teams activities in town before the game, and hopefully the people who went will want to come back or will talk to others.
This may be part of why it is so hard to get rid of a bowl once it is on the schedule even when there aren't enough deserving teams to justify it.
Different thing but related. My daughter qualified for the state finals for high school mountain biking (in her first year of real competition, proud dad.) The event is held down in Durango. The town puts a lot of resources into the race. The event is held on a course that currently is not open for public use (eventually will be.) Adams State College as well also puts a lot of resources into the event.
As we were driving around town I heard on the local public radio station that a study had been done on the event they calculated that for just that weekend the economic impact on the town was over $1 million. This on a weekend that was outside the normal busy periods.
Small colleges across the country are also struggling to maintain enrollments. For a town like Durango Adams State is a significant economic driver. For this weekend they managed to get hundreds of potential students and their parents on campus. They gave tours and put out the effort to recruit. They moved to the top of my daughters list because she likes the campus, they have an outstanding MB team, and the trails network starts right on the edge of campus. Just guessing that the break even on their efforts would be something like 30-50 students a year from the event, maybe less.