Quote Originally Posted by taper View Post
Curious why you doubt the claim about losing money. Nearly all college athletic departments are in the red without subsidies. It's pretty common for 1st round games to have <4k attendance. With a minimum bid of $30k you need almost $10 net per person just to break even. Not everybody charges NDSU ticket prices and revenue isn't the same as profit. You're probably paying around $1k in wages just to staff the ticket office and gates for the day.
I was assuming the minimum financial guarantee was 20k for first round games but looked it up and it's actually 40k (page 16 at https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/cha...hampManual.pdf)

That is more problematic than I was thinking especially for games that draw less than 4k. I don't think netting $10 per ticket sold is that much to ask but maybe I'm wrong - I've got no idea what a typical budget looks like for these games but I'm pretty sure the minimum guarantee for first round games used to be 20k so I'd assume/hope the reason that has doubled in recent years is because the vast majority of schools have no trouble hitting it.