"At least half of all sports fans in the Louisville MSA are University of Kentucky loyalists. Unless those folks are goo-goo for Lady Gaga or bonkers for The Boss, the Yum! Center has little chance of luring them in the door.
That goes for IU fans too.
Common sense and absent dollars say the Yum! Center has a seriously flawed business model. It not only ignores thousands of potential customers in its own backyard, but millions who live elsewhere in this state and across the river."
Somebody in the ACC didn't do some vetting.
Trest, Mark Coomes is pro-nba and wrote this in a manner to drum support with some misleading or missing facts.
The courier journal bluegrass poll showed that in basketball, only 33.3% in Louisville identified themselves as UK fans and 53.7% for UofL. In football only 20.8% identified themselves as uk fans and 61.3% said UofL. Mark, like other UK fans want to continue to falsely report their numbers as half the city or more.
There also is one main reason that he and UK fans want an nba team here. That is because they know it would kill UofL financially in lower attendance and revenue. This city isn't big enough corporate wise to support both. Corporations would choose the nba over UofL in suite and marketing sales. UofL would have to drastically reduce its prices to remain competitive.
The arena is not losing money like Mark leads you to believe. On Monday the Louisville Arena Authority held its first meeting since AEG took over as arena manager. AEG reported that the arena expects to TURN A PROFIT of 1.35 million for the fiscal year that ends in June, up 16% than what was budgeted. This is a result of better revenues mainly from arena rent, concessions and merchandise sales.
Booked events is not the problem and UofL books more than just the mens games. The women also play all their games there and averaged close to 11,000 last year. The main problem is the "Tif". The entire whiskey row block immediately east of the arena was supposed to have been completed last year but legal issues and the stabilizing needing to be done has them still sitting empty, not creating money for the tif district. The stabilizing is taking place now and once done they can finally be refurbished and leased.