Return on investment: New Mexico State football selling more season tickets and tickets for home opener
LAS CRUCES - We all know the cycle, by now.
A late arriving crowd at Aggie Memorial Stadium fills in nicely for the first home game of the New Mexico State football season and/or for either UTEP or the University of New Mexico rivalry games. As the season progresses, however, attendance wanes as the Aggies finish below .500.
Mario Moccia's job as the NM State athletics director is to sustain that fan interest throughout the course of the football season. Moccia's athletics department has been creative in finding new revenue streams, but football ticket sales — in the 30,000-seat Aggie Memorial Stadium — remains the largest untapped revenue source at the school.
With the school set to make the move from an independent to Conference USA and the promise of College Football Playoff revenue a year from now under newly hired head coach Jerry Kill, the school is all in on moving the needle for football attendance, even if it means potentially finishing in the red for two straight years.
"You can make significant money if this thing ever got going," Moccia said. "It's the largest untapped thing, by far. We feel this is our opportunity to move the needle with Aggie football going into a conference that is a member of the (college football playoff) and we aren't an affiliate. There is an infusion of excitement."
Athletics increased its deficit by $1.5 million in Fiscal Year 2022 — to about $4 million total — primarily due to paying off expiring contracts for Doug Martin's former staff, while raising salaries and increasing the number of coaching positions on next season's staff.
In November 2021, the department hired Kill, who will make a $550,000 base salary in 2022. Martin was paid a $437,000 base salary last season. The football team added offensive coordinator Tim Beck and three additional support staff, raising the amount paid to the assistant and staff salary pool by $527,223 over last year.
Moccia's department is mandated to balance their books by the state. However, the current university leadership OK'd the additional debt this past fiscal year, seeing it as an investment.
He said the investment in Kill is already paying dividends, noting there have been 171 new season ticket accounts as of July 1, compared to 16 at the same time two years ago and 26 in July of 2021.
"I think there is going to be a big increase in season ticket sales," Moccia said.
Stuff the stadium
While season ticket sales is the goal, Moccia has circled the Aug. 27 home opener against Nevada as an opportunity to cash in from individual ticket sales. To that end, it's being promoted as Stuff the Stadium.
The first Stuff the Stadium promotion for the NMSU football team — the 2015 season opener against Georgia State — was a success. The result was an announced attendance of 27,000. The game brought in single-game ticket revenue of $108,000, the third highest total in the past 20 seasons.
The only games with more single-game ticket revenue were the 2005 home opener against UTEP ($310,577) and a 2008 game against UNM ($157,791).
Can the 2022 home opener crack the top three?
Moccia said he's almost single handedly sold $41,645 in tickets for the game against Nevada, so it's already No. 12 on the list of the games with most single-game ticket revenue.
In this season's version of the Stuff the Stadium promotion, groups of 20 or more can purchase tickets for $5 or $10 based on location inside Aggie Memorial Stadium.
Moccia said he's personally contacting local businesses to participate.
"There is a long way to go and nobody has said no, yet," he said.
The Aggies have six home games in 2022 and a win on Aug. 27 against a Nevada team that is also breaking in a new coaching staff would show signs of a positive early return on investment.
This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: New Mexico State football selling more season tickets and tickets for home opener
