West Virginia is exploring all avenues when it comes to revenue sharing, according to Athletic Director Wren Baker.
The athletic department hired the firm Huron to come in and do a massive deep dive and assessment for the board around a year ago in order to get a picture of where things stood.
“Grade us out, how are we doing in a variety of metrics? What does the future look like for us if we want to be competitive? It’s confirmed a lot of things that we’ve said before,” Baker said on the 3 Guys Before the Game Podcast.
West Virginia has done a good job raising money compared to peer institutions, especially when you factor in the fact that they have less premium seating than some other places. Increasing that will drive donations and what is required annually, but also will drive people to try to get in position to get their hands on those seating opportunities.
In terms of campus investment, the average for Big 12 student fees plus campus support is around $40 million and the Mountaineers are operating at way less than 25-percent of that.
“I do think it was eye-opening for the board. There’s a lot of priorities on campus, a lot of things that are important but as we’re at this situation in time I think there’s a value proposition to be made,” Baker said. “How important are some of these things? It’ll be a combination.”
One path that West Virginia is exploring is naming rights and Baker said that they’re down the path on one opportunity that’s significant although he wouldn’t indicate which venue.
“A seven-figure opportunity,” he said.
Still, the Mountaineers are shopping both Mountaineer Field and the Coliseum.
The administration has also made some changes to the men’s basketball per seat requirement and Baker anticipates at some point they’ll probably do some reseating there to help drive revenue.
Parking is another thing that is expected to be cleaned up, given the significant donations required to secure spots to avoid land-grabbing those to others such as Blue Lot passes.
“We're going to have to do some things that's going to upset some people. It's going to make some people uncomfortable. But we're no longer at a position where we can forego revenue when there is revenue to be had. So that's what we're focusing on,” he said.
Overall in the three budget cycles that Baker has been a part of the Mountaineers have averaged around a six-percent self-generated revenue growth. But that alone is not going to recapture the funding that is set to be directed to revenue sharing.
“And so it really is everybody doing what they can to ensure that the athletic program, which we all know is important from a campus branding standpoint, from a statewide branding standpoint, from an enrollment standpoint, ultimately, because it is a big attraction on the enrollment front,” Baker said.
In terms of future projects, Baker said that West Virginia has a very detailed press box side renovation of the premium seating that architects have done a deep dive on as well as a company called Legends, which is co-owned by the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees.
“They've done a survey, and they've surveyed if we build X number of new suites, new club seats, new loges, what's the appetite to sell those, what premium areas in other parts of the stadium are you vacating, and then they look at the backfill of those,” Baker said.
The board has seen the results of both the architectural renderings, cost estimates and the return of investment and officials have been given the green light to talk to some donors. And ultimately, that’ll be what drives how quickly the project goes whether they get a couple big gifts.
“Usually, you have a silent phase of a fundraising campaign for a project like that. I would say we are entering the silent phase. How quickly will the public rollout of that come? It depends on how much momentum we build in the silent phase and how quickly we build it,” Baker said.
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