Suites Yet To Be Filled at Byrd Stadium
The athletic department at the University of Maryland has long term leases on 41 of the 64 suites at Byrd Stadium. That number is 7 short of the number required to pay the annual debt requirment for the new Tyser Tower addition. In today’s Washington Post the university also reports having only sold 357 of the 539 mezzanine seats which are situated just below the luxury boxes. The school added the luxury suites to increase revenue and interest in Terps football. Duke and North Carolina are currently the only ACC schools without luxury suites.
The economy is certainly one reason why all of the suites aren’t spoken for. I for one, would love to watch games from one of the suites. It would be great to bring the wife and kid to a game knowing that we had our own bathroom and indoor seating incase the weather took a turn for the worse. I’m thinking of last years game against NCST. However, it’s hard to come up with the funds and enough people to pay the $35,000 to $57,000 annual payment. If I were to win the lottery however, leasing a suite might be on the list right after paying off the house, car, and college fund.
The university has been selling single game plans and single game tickets for the mezzanine seats. Maryland has been able to sell additional suites since lifting the ban on alcohol service. If you lease a suite you will now be able to purchase a maximum of 96 beers per 24 person suite. All other stadiums in the ACC with luxury boxes allow alcohol in the suite. I think alcohol service should be allowed for these seats. Your paying a lot of money for those seats and I think you should be given the option to drink if you so choose.
I hope the school is able to sell some of the suites for single games because nothing looks worse than empty seats in your home stadium. I also hope the folks sitting in those suites can make it outside to help cheer on our beloved Terps.
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September 12th, 2009 at 6:52 am
I think a lot of it has to do with the economy. It was really just bad timing for this project to get started as things were starting to slow down. If you think about it though, those folks who did buy suites are going to buy some alcohol at each game. Probably not 96 beers (although if we went that might happen), so if they are able to use the money they will make from the alcohol to put toward the building fund, there will be more money. Infact I would not be surprised if at the end of the season, the beer and wine sales were the equivalent of a suite sale. So with this little formula. If they sold on average 50 drinks in the 41 sold suites, and were able to make a $4 profit per drink over the 7 home game they would make $57,400. What do you know, that is $400 over the price of one suite. Can someone put me in charge of things around there?