Less Is More: UH Reports Attendance Drop, Increased Revenue
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Rainbows’ PPV Experiment
Passing On Larger Revenues
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Univ. of Hawaii (UH) football attendance last season dropped
to 32,268, its lowest in six years, while the team’s PPV rights fees “hit a
high,” according to Lewis & Tsai of the HONOLULU ADVERTISER. UH received $812,310
in rights fees last season from PPV, “nearly double the $463,038 it earned in
2002.” UH Athletic Dir Herman Frazier said that he “believed the school came
out ahead financially this season.” Frazier: “No question about it. If you add
that ($812,310) to the $700,000 we got from [KFVE-UPN], that’s $1.5[M] and the
year before (pay-per-view started), we got $1.3[M].” UH Regent Alvin Tanaka
said, “We would like to see what the trade-off is in lost attendance because,
even though we have pay-per-view in football, we just don’t want to have a [star
like UH WR] Chad Owens playing in front of 10,000 people.” But KFVE & KHNL-NBC
VP & GM John Fink said of the attendance drop, “Did somebody stay home? Absolutely.
But did $800,000 worth stay home? No way.” Fink also noted that “ESPN took many
of the big-name schools like Michigan State and Boise State out of the pay-per-view
lineup and viewers were still paying for some losing teams” (HONOLULU
ADVERTISER, 2/22).
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