Pollard on Cyclone Club Level Changes

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Trice

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Some good questions here...

If I could, I would ask Jamie Pollard what specifically Mississippi State has done. This is a school we dominated in donation revenue and now well behind. What did they do? Anything we can learn there? I don't know of any huge donor.. but I don't know anything about Mississippi State so.. who knows? If it is a big donor, that may explain it. But just curious how they made the move.

(Important to look at donations over a time horizon since there can be fluctuations year to year)

2005-2009:
ISU about $35M in donations
Miss St: about $20M in donations

ISU was $7M/yr vs. Miss St $4M/yr, or +$3M per year, +$15M over 5 yrs.

2016-2020:
ISU: about $90Min donations (+$55M vs. 2005-2009)
Miss St: about $130M (+$110M vs. 2005-2009)

ISU was about $18M/yr, Miss St was about $26M/yr; or -$8M/yr, -$40M over 5 yrs.

You want my guess as to what Mississippi State has done since 2009 to increase donations, that Iowa State hasn't done?

Added Nick Saban to their division.
 

Mr.G.Spot

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Think about the "pro football fan" type of supporter. We don't have many of those. Most of these fans in Iowa are "toe hicks."

I know a lot of them (most of them have never set foot on any campus) are they are writing checks for tickets and donations. It's there vacation and church donation. Impressive, actually.
 
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cymonw1980

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I've seen some of this on this thread and elsewhere. Just out of curiosity and to potentially help the communication gap, how would people in your position like to be contacted to be asked to donate?

I live out of state now but grew up in Ames (my dad taught at ISU, parents still live in Ames). The Cyclone Club membership is only about 6600 people...

There is no way the Cyclone Club should only be 6600 people. We need to increase it....

- There are meet up groups all around the country with fans going to watch the games at local bars/restaurants (I ran into a group at a bar in Raleigh, NC - had no idea they existed). how many of them spent $100 on that one afternoon?

- There are 160k+ followers of ISU Athletics on Facebook, 140k twitter followers for ISU Football. What's the hook to attract 5k-10k of them to start contributing? what do we offer them based on where they live?


I think ISU needs to find ways to connect with these people (multiple ways to find them - meetup groups, social media, alumni records, etc.) they are passionate fans of ISU athletics... Look at all the away games every year and see what meetup groups, social media followers, alumni are in the area - places you will travel too regularly (conf opponents) set up regular opportunities to connect. Offer tickets to sponsored local tail gates for games in the area, maybe at certain levels, you get tickets, parking for all ISU events in the area, seated with local fans, tailgate with local fans, etc.

For me, it is more about media. Offer a premium subscription to all ISU sports content on Cyclones.com. Cyclones.tv is a good start - I bought a subscription just to watch the 1992 ISU v. osu basketball game when we beat okie st by 1 in OT (first game I attended as a kid).

Also, I love looking up box scores and stats from games. There is some data on Cyclones.com, but they could add premium content. Like box scores going back as far as we have them... for example, on Cyclones.com you can go to "schedule" then select a year and see the results for that year - going all the way back to the 1894 season in football. Link pictures, box scores, game highlights, full games, etc. to any seasons / games these are available for and put them in a "Cyclone Club" premium content view. If you are a member, sign in, get the additional content (add Cyclones.tv content to the Cyclone Club membership, make the content more visible on the site to attract more attention to premium access).

Just some thoughts - got to connect with fans that are not able to attend home games regularly.
 

cymonw1980

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You want my guess as to what Mississippi State has done since 2009 to increase donations, that Iowa State hasn't done?

Added Nick Saban to their division.

agree to disagree. Miss St has grown contributions 5.5x over that period. Arkansas (also in bama's div) grew 1.5x, (ISU grew 1.6x). auburn (arch rival of bama) is up just 17% in that time frame. The point is - are you saying there is no saban fueled growth except Miss St? That doesn't make sense.

To me, they looked in the mirror in 2010 and saw they were #52 of of 52 in revenue among the P5 and decided to do something about it.
 
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Gunnerclone

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I live out of state now but grew up in Ames (my dad taught at ISU, parents still live in Ames). The Cyclone Club membership is only about 6600 people...

There is no way the Cyclone Club should only be 6600 people. We need to increase it....

- There are meet up groups all around the country with fans going to watch the games at local bars/restaurants (I ran into a group at a bar in Raleigh, NC - had no idea they existed). how many of them spent $100 on that one afternoon?

- There are 160k+ followers of ISU Athletics on Facebook, 140k twitter followers for ISU Football. What's the hook to attract 5k-10k of them to start contributing? what do we offer them based on where they live?


I think ISU needs to find ways to connect with these people (multiple ways to find them - meetup groups, social media, alumni records, etc.) they are passionate fans of ISU athletics... Look at all the away games every year and see what meetup groups, social media followers, alumni are in the area - places you will travel too regularly (conf opponents) set up regular opportunities to connect. Offer tickets to sponsored local tail gates for games in the area, maybe at certain levels, you get tickets, parking for all ISU events in the area, seated with local fans, tailgate with local fans, etc.

For me, it is more about media. Offer a premium subscription to all ISU sports content on Cyclones.com. Cyclones.tv is a good start - I bought a subscription just to watch the 1992 ISU v. osu basketball game when we beat okie st by 1 in OT (first game I attended as a kid).

Also, I love looking up box scores and stats from games. There is some data on Cyclones.com, but they could add premium content. Like box scores going back as far as we have them... for example, on Cyclones.com you can go to "schedule" then select a year and see the results for that year - going all the way back to the 1894 season in football. Link pictures, box scores, game highlights, full games, etc. to any seasons / games these are available for and put them in a "Cyclone Club" premium content view. If you are a member, sign in, get the additional content (add Cyclones.tv content to the Cyclone Club membership, make the content more visible on the site to attract more attention to premium access).

Just some thoughts - got to connect with fans that are not able to attend home games regularly.

To jump off this, in all reality there is only one way to get the numbers up: be decent at football (ho to a bowl every year, jump up and challenge for the conference 1/3 years for like a decade straight, and we need to be .500 against Iowa.
 
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VeloClone

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To jump off this, in all reality there is only one way to get the numbers up: be decent at football (ho to a bowl every year, jump up and challenge for the conference 1/3 years for like a decade straight, and we need to be .500 against Iowa.
This sounds like an interesting promotion. Did you get the idea from something Iowa is doing with Vodka Sam?
 
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SEIOWA CLONE

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Without a doubt ISU fans have been very fortunate for years that a person could get decent tickets at fairly low costs through the university. We started purchasing season tickets when our kids started attending ISU around 2001 or 02. That first year we got 4 tickets in the old South endzone for $99.00 apiece, with no donation required, we parked over by Hilton on the grass for $20.00 a ticket, over time we increased our ticket number to 6, and when they redid the South endzone we dropped down to four again. Since we took out handicapped daughter to tailgate with us, we parked in the handicapped lot.

We have all seen the changes that have occurred over the past 5 to 10 years, more fans, more people wanting to park close to the stadium, increase prices of tickets and now another push of donations. I guess it's kind of the price we have to pay for having a better team, but for many, miss the days of rolling in late and getting good parking with a half-filled stadium. The product on the field is a lot better, but it's alright to miss what you used to take for granted.

Also, ISU allows a person to purchase up to 4 tickets with a donation for the better seats, schools like EIU will only allow you to purchase 2 tickets for the same priced donation, forcing their fans to donate more to get equal seats at ISU, which then encouraged people at ISU, to pool their money together, cutting down the total number of people in the grid iron club.

With the passing of our daughter in the fall, we will no longer be allowed to park in the handicapped lot, after talking it over we now plan on starting to donate to get parking, not sure on the amount, at least its a start.
 
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theshadow

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If I could, I would ask Jamie Pollard what specifically Mississippi State has done. This is a school we dominated in donation revenue and now well behind. What did they do? Anything we can learn there? I don't know of any huge donor.. but I don't know anything about Mississippi State so.. who knows? If it is a big donor, that may explain it. But just curious how they made the move.

Have an incredibly successful 3rd men's sport that requires a donation to even have the chance to access most of its available seating.
 

cymonw1980

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They also have an NFL QB who loves his old school and isn't afraid to give back.

Dak didn't make real money until the 2020/21 season (only made a total of about $3M before that). If he is a big donor going forward, that might explain jumps beyond this... but current uptick in contributions at Miss St is prior to Dak's pay day... the latest numbers in the data are from the 2019/20 season. So even if Dak signed the deal with dallas in spring 2020 and then immediately sent a check to Miss St and it made it into these numbers.. that would only impact the last year (2019/20). The 5th year (2019/20) is in line the the previous 4 - all were around $23M-$30M each year in contributions. So, Dak doesn't really explain the change.. could be another huge donor that i am not aware of though.
 

cymonw1980

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Have an incredibly successful 3rd men's sport that requires a donation to even have the chance to access most of its available seating.

so, that sport was added in 2011?

I am comparing growth at Miss St vs. growth at Iowa State. Contributions since 2009 have grown 5.5x at Miss St, 1.6x at ISU.

This is not explained by baseball. Again, Miss St trailed EVERY P5 school in revenue. Contributions were terrible. Then they shot up starting in 2011... just seems like miss st is a school ISU should be able to compete with in terms of fan support (Ticket revenue we have passed them again as of 2020).
 

Gunnerclone

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so, that sport was added in 2011?

I am comparing growth at Miss St vs. growth at Iowa State. Contributions since 2009 have grown 5.5x at Miss St, 1.6x at ISU.

This is not explained by baseball. Again, Miss St trailed EVERY P5 school in revenue. Contributions were terrible. Then they shot up starting in 2011... just seems like miss st is a school ISU should be able to compete with in terms of fan support (Ticket revenue we have passed them again as of 2020).

It’s every sport. Their Women’s soccer team is probably on the same level as our mens wrestling program in terms of interest and fan support. We need to get hockey and then make it a “free add on” at certain donor levels and give out a few games to the lower donor levels.
 

cymonw1980

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It’s every sport. Their Women’s soccer team is probably on the same level as our mens wrestling program in terms of interest and fan support. We need to get hockey and then make it a “free add on” at certain donor levels and give out a few games to the lower donor levels.

Again, this did not happen until around 2011. In 2010 they were dead last in revenue across the P5. Then they started to grow. This is why I use them as an example. In addition, ISU recently passed them up in Ticket revenues (ISU was ahead, then fell behind, now re-took the lead in 2020.

The point is ISU and the rest of the P5 were ahead of Miss St (one of the few schools ISU was ahead of 15 yrs ago). There growth (not just sec TV but most importantly contributions) has been significant...

Below is an article posted by @theshadow from 2013... seems to explain what they did. But the main thing is, MSU fans realized that to compete in the SEC they needed to step up. The athletic dept started driving contributions building the case, their campaign took off.

We need to do something similar.

ISU fans will need to step up donations, tickets spend, to compete in the P5
. We are talking about table stakes right now.

That is my point.

 
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Tornado man

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Mississippi State also has a new cool convention/conference center that I've been to - the Mill at MSU - which is a renovated cotton mill, built in 1902. Plus a 110-room Marriott Hotel connected to it. ISU needs to accelerate things.

 
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cymonw1980

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Good find... seems to make paint the picture well.... fans stepped up their support to make MSU more competitive financially.

BTW.. they were behind ole miss, passed them up the last two years.. I am sure their fans are excited about that.

 
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