Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Two local business owners are urging football fans to “Stay Home and Play” for the Nov. 24 game at Arrowhead Stadium between Kansas and Missouri.
Jerry and Sue Neverve, owners of the Red Lyon Tavern, 944 Massachusetts St., handed out flyers before Kansas’ game against Florida International outlining a protest against the Athletics Department for its decision to move the next two Kansas-Missouri football games to Kansas City. The couple is organizing a downtown promotion on the day of the game that will offer fans showing unused game tickets vastly reduced prices on food and merchandise.
“My business is small — it won’t be made or broken by this,” Sue Neverve said. “We didn’t look at it like that. We looked at it like a community. We consider KU a part of that community. There are so many losses here. Plus, I want to go to Memorial Stadium and watch the game.”
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Sue Neverve said without knowing the time of kickoff, which won’t be announced until at least two weeks before the game, businesses couldn’t make formal plans for the promotion.
The main loss is an estimated $713,000 that Kansas, Douglas County and the city of Lawrence will be out because of the venue change, according to the Lawrence Journal-World. David Darling, a retired Kansas State University economist, was commissioned by the Lawrence Journal-World in April to do the estimation.
Associate Athletic Director Jim Marchiony said the prime reason for moving the game was financial. The Athletics Department is guaranteed at least $1 million in revenue for each of the contract’s two years.
Marchiony said the actual number could be worth up to $250,000 more than that each year, depending on attendance. This year’s game is sold out.
Marchiony called Darling’s estimate “a guestimate.”
“That wasn’t based on any kind of facts at all,” Marchiony said. “So on one hand, you have a guaranteed $1 million to the KU Athletics Department, against a figure that is just a projection.”
Marchiony said Kansas added a nonconference home game to the schedule to ensure seven games in Lawrence, tied for the most in the school’s history. Darling’s study estimated the loss as the difference between a Kansas-Missouri game in Lawrence and the replacement nonconference game.
“Before the season, people would have said that Missouri is different than bringing in one of these teams, but we had in excess of 40,000 people at each of our nonconference games,” Marchiony said.
Another consideration, Marchiony said, was Kansas City’s 60,000 Kansas alumni.
The Neverves have been Williams Fund members and season ticket holders for almost 20 years. Sue Neverve said without knowing the time of kickoff, which won’t be announced until at least two weeks before the game, businesses couldn’t make formal plans for the promotion.
“I’m sure there will be a lot of people that will go to Arrowhead because they will feel they would let the team down if they didn’t,” Sue Neverve said. “Then there will be other people who won’t be in the stands. I have heard from a lot of season ticket holders that said they won’t be there.”
Marchiony said the Athletic Department understood the sentiments of concerned business owners but said they expected hundreds, if not thousands, of Kansas fans in restaurants and bars in Lawrence on the day of the game eating and watching the game in public.
Marchiony said Kansas Athletics would wait before deciding if it was beneficial to attempt to extend the two year agreement.
— Edited by Kaitlyn Syring
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Comments
Businesses protest Kansas-Missouri game
I'd bet Red Lyon sees approximately 350 people every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. There are no fewer than 60 people in there every time I visit the joint. If every one of them is buying two drinks, at their average price of like $4.50 a beer, they're getting $3,150.00 every weekend night. Almost $10k per weekend. I can name a lot of places that don't draw nearly that much business in a weekend, that aren't going to be broken by this.
I do agree, though, I'd much prefer to have the game here supporting the local economy. I just don't like the whiny excuse that this will break their business- how have they come to rely on this for business, since up until a couple years ago, no one was really excited or coming to see KU football?
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