A plan gone awry

Steve Carp

Friday, July 9, 1999 | 10:30 a.m.

The mechanism was supposedly in place. The people to carry out the plan were already on board. The resources had already been tapped and it was just a matter of giving the spigot another twist and watch the money flow.

Today, it has been dismantled and it's back to the old, traditional ways. As Bob Dylan once warbled, "You go your way and I'll go mine."

Call it the "Great Sports Marketing Experiment" that failed.

In 1996, the UNLV athletic department joined forces with the promotional arm of the Thomas & Mack Center to create "UNLV Sports Marketing." Instead of the athletic department hustling tickets, trying to increase donors to its scholarship program and find corporate sponsors, the Thomas & Mack would undertake those endeavors.

Athletics would get a certain amount of money that it could plug into its budget, which the past three years hovered around $10 million. The Thomas & Mack would also use the vehicle to drive its non-UNLV events such as family shows, concerts and other bookings.

It was supposed to be a win-win proposition. Instead, it created in-fighting, strife and a lot of bad feelings.

Why did a plan that both sides said was good turn out bad? And what happens now?

"I think the philosophies were different," UNLV athletic director Charles Cavagnaro said. "It's a different culture between athletics and running a building.

"In athletics, it's about building lasting relationships with people that go from year to year. With a building, you're booking an event, you stage the event, and you move on.

"There's a conflict in that kind of thinking."

And the conflicts went beyond philosophies. Money has been the center of the issue from the get-go as athletics has felt it has not received its fair share of the revenue the Thomas & Mack and Sam Boyd Stadium generates (see accompanying story).

Cavagnaro admits it has had an impact on UNLV's athletic department budget. And it was part of the reason why he asked to regain control of the ticketing, scholarship donor programs, marketing and promotions.

"It came down to the Thomas & Mack did not feel comfortable guaranteeing the money we needed we feel we have to have to compete in the Mountain West Conference and and address gender equity issues," Cavagnaro said.

That wasn't the case, said T&M director Pat Christenson.

"The deal was never to give athletics a set amount of money," he said. "The agreement was Sports Marketing would do the best it could and athletics agreed to that.

"We stepped in when there wasn't a team in place and we built a model for them like a pro franchise. At the time, it made a lot of sense to bring the two together.

"We presented it to Charlie and he agreed to it."

What Cavagnaro's department got was about $5-6 million annually without having to lift a finger. Of course, that included about $4.5 million in scholarship donor sales, fueled mostly by the relative success of UNLV basketball.

But Olympic non-revenue sports such as baseball, soccer, tennis, swimming and golf did not benefit from UNLV Sports Marketing. Those teams were left to their own devices to raise money and promote themselves.

It weighed into Cavagnaro's decision to take back the operation.

"I was not happy with the direction our Olympic sports were headed," he said. "We're basically going to let our head coaches lead the way and we'll give them whatever support they need."

Still, it's really about selling men's basketball and football. And when the numbers didn't match projections this past year, Cavagnaro thought it was time to pull the plug.

But he admits it's hard to sell a football team that went winless and a basketball team that underachieved.

"Winning is the best marketing tool you can have," he said. "Winning cures a lot of ills."

So the athletic department is sinking a considerable amount of its $14.6 million budget into football in the hopes that John Robinson can do what no sports marketing enterprise could with gimmicks -- and that's put warm bodies in the seats at the refurbished Sam Boyd Stadium.

The football budget is $3 million, with two-thirds of it going toward coaches' salaries and recruiting. The two go hand-in-hand. If you have good coaches who can recruit, you'll get good players. if you have good players, your chances of success on the field dramatically increase.

And if you have success on the field, there's a good chance you'll have success at the turnstiles.

"The problem has been we have relied on basketball to carry the day for us," Cavagnaro said. "That doesn't work. We need football to be successful as well as basketball."

Jim Weaver said the same thing in 1992 when he became UNLV's athletic director. The former Penn State lineman knew that football was going to be the key to helping the school turn the fiscal corner, that the glory days of basketball under Jerry Tarkanian weren't likely to continue, especially with a major NCAA investigation hanging over the school like a dark cloud and a shower of sanctions looming on the horizon.

But Rebel football struggled during most of Weaver's tenure. The school had just one winning season -- 1994 -- when it went 7-5 and won the Las Vegas Bowl, while Weaver was in the A.D.'s chair.

However, Weaver did have the right idea when he was given control of the Thomas & Mack and Sam Boyd Stadium by then-president Robert Maxson. Christenson basically reported to Weaver and athletics controlled all the revenue streams the arena and stadium produced.

But with football struggling and basketball reeling under Rollie Massimino and the NCAA coming down hard on the school, the athletic department went from a surplus situation which had been the case during Brad Rothermel's reign as A.D. at the start of the '90s to operating over $1 million in the red annually.

To fix the problem, Weaver essentially robbed Peter to pay Paul. Money that was set aside for capital improvements and maintenance for the T&M and the stadium were now being used to bail out athletics.

In 1995, Gov. Kenny Guinn, then interim UNLV president, met with Christenson and he severed the ties, returning the Thomas & Mack to a self-sustaining entity. Athletics would have to sink or swim on its own.

Enter Cavagnaro. But Christenson saw the athletic department was in no position to market and sell its teams. So he offered the services of his people. Cavagnaro, who admits he was not in a position of strength at the time to bargain, accepted.

And the Sports Marketing people did try to make it work. Even before the actual alliance kicked in, it participated in a $5 ticket promotion that sold over 32,000 tickets for a 1995 home football game against Arkansas State. The game drew 24,192. It created the "Rebel Experience" for home games that provided a tailgating area, food venues and a music stage for pre- and postgame concerts.

A "phone room" was created to solicit potential ticket-buyers that had good results. Last season, for the first time, Rebel basketball games were televised in Spanish back to Las Vegas to tap into the Hispanic market. The games were well-received.

Still, there was internal bickering. And at times, it seemed the two sides were working against each other instead of working together. Neither Cavagnaro nor Christenson would comment about the animosity, but there's no denying it existed.

And the reality is if basketball is doing well, people are going to buy tickets. The scholarship donor program remains the No. 1 revenue producer for UNLV athletics. How well it does is directly correlated with the success Bill Bayno's team has on the floor.

Today, athletics retains control over everything with the exception of the corporate sales and radio broadcasting. The school's teams are currently without a station to broadcast its games after KXNT 840-AM declined to pick up the option for this coming season. Finding a new radio home will be the Thomas & Mack's responsibility.

Television is being handled by the Mountain West's network -- SportsWest. The schedule has not been finalized, but UNLV will earn $300,000 from that arrangement for football and men's basketball. KLAS Channel 8 will be the new home for UNLV's televised contests.

Promotional giveaways, advertising and promotion will now be under the athletic department's auspices. Fund-raising and development will continue to be a joint venture with the UNLV Foundation.

After letting the Thomas & Mack do it the last three years, it'll now be up to Cavagnaro's team to carry the day. From Christenson's perspective, his people came through.

"Where are we to blame for this?" he said. "Everything we generated, we gave back to them.

"Both sides had an obligation to make this work. But the bottom line is a deal is a deal and they didn't like the deal, so why do it?"

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