Coach Prime in Greenwich mean time? Not on CU’s dime.
The Broncos are having a jolly old romp in England this week, with Denver making its second visit for a game in the United Kingdom in the last four years. Sean Payton, Bo Nix and the Broncos (3-2) are slated to take on the winless and woeful Jets (0-5) for a Sunday morning breakfast kickoff at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Guess what? The Big 12, no shock, is looking for a little piece of that sweet Euro action, too.
Commissioner Brent Yormark’s league trails the SEC and Big Ten badly when it comes to disposable income in the age of revenue sharing and the transfer portal. Yormark is not above hunting for nickels under every cushion he can find — including those across the pond.
Ergo, the Big 12 recently announced that it’s expanding its “global footprint” by sending Kansas and Arizona State to London next September to play the very first American college football game at Wembley Stadium.
“I’ve often said my goal is for the Big 12 to be the most globally relevant conference in college athletics,” Yormark said via a news release. “Expanding our international presence will elevate our brand, create new opportunities for student-athletes, and open the door to meaningful commercial growth for the league.”
Grading The Week’s translation: He’ll be back. The Big 12 will be back. And the GTW crew will bet you a pound sterling it’ll be taking some very long, very serious looks at more games on other foreign soils.
Which is where the Buffs come in. Or, rather, why they probably don’t. Not without some serious financial stipulations, at any rate.
CU Buffs to London? — C-minus
Deion Sanders is pretty much the most marketable thing — coach, player, mascot, stadium, whatever — that the Big 12 has going right now. Period.
As bad as every close CU loss makes Buffs fans feel, believe us, it hurts Yormark almost as much. Those empty seats at the Big 12 championship game last December at Jerry World had Coach Prime’s name on them, and CU didn’t make the big dance.
Sanders and the Buffs overseas would be a public-relations home run, both for CU and for the league. But there’s no way, the GTW accounting wonks insist, that the Buffs’ bean-counters would ever let CU give up a home game, and a home gate, for a jaunt across the pond.
And they can give you 31.2 million reasons why.
As in $31.2 million — which is the revenue from football ticket sales CU reported to the NCAA for its 2023-24 fiscal year. Context: In 2021-22, the Buffs reported $16.6 million in football ticket revenue.
CU also saw $2.9 million gameday revenue from “program, novelty, parking and concession sales” for the ’23-24 fiscal, which also doubled what it was just two years earlier. That’s nearly $500,000 in revenue per home game just on incidentals. You think CU is going to give that up without some serious financial guarantees on the part of the league or their international hosts?
The GTW crew could easily see CU making some waves overseas. But we can’t picture the Buffs ever giving up a home date, and all the dollars that come with it, in order to pull that off.
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