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FAU Receives $6 Million Gift from The GEO Group to Name Football Stadium

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FAU Receives $6 Million Gift from The GEO Group to Name Football Stadium

GeorgiaOwl said

San Jose St. gets stadium $$$

San Jose State announces new stadium naming rights deal – CollegeFootballTalk

And from a bank headquartered in Peoria, IL!!! $580K per year - not bad.

Whats up with our stadium Mr. Chun??? Newer (BY FAR) and MUCH BETTER than "Spartan Stadium"!!

Posted On: Aug 6th 2016, 9:43 PM #357538

Everyone should be fired.  It's quite possible everything relating to money gets you upset.  Who knows the details of their business market is in San Jose but I will point out we have a MLB and an NFL team (with basically a brand new stadium) without a naming rights deal.  So I don't think this is an idictment of FAU.

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No every thing relating to money does not get me upset, just seeming inability to get the job done. Mr. Chun was hired here because of his "track record" of fundraising for athletics at The Ohio State University. The stadium has been here for 5 years now and still no $$$ for the school. The one deal fell through but with the size of the South Florida business market, ya would think after 5 YEARS…..

I admit I don't know what has not been done to find this naming rights deal but I would hope that would include hiring a professional company or at least individuals to do this job and pay them a fee or percentage of the deal for their work.

Oh, by the way, the 49ers JUST built a brand new NFL stadium not real far from San Jose in Santa Clara!

And finally, we had ALL better care about the revenues for FAU Athletics are our CUSA deal is not so good anymore, we DON'T sell seats to our revenue sports as they have no been any good (or even exciting to watch, thus slow ticket sales) for years and we DO have a debt burden with the football stadium. IF the Big12 expands and opens up 3 AAC slots and we don't move up, we WILL BE hurting in revenues as we will be STUCK at the low mid major level possibly forever.

But as always - GO OWLS!
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Chun's vision led to 30 million being raised for an athletic facility.  No one was talking about an academic center before he stepped on campus.  So he is part of the team that led to this money.


Companies have decided that naming rights deals are bad business.  Blame the previous administration (and I am talking about 2010/2011) for bungling this.  With the premier team in south Florida (the Dolphins) without a naming rights deal I would say that is indicative that the market is bare.

The Big10 deal basically says that we and our fellow mid-majors are destined for scraps.  The best we can hope for is AAC.  Write a bigger check if you don't like it but whining about it won't change reality.
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OC, not whining just stating facts and concerns. But I do believe that Dr. Kelly has done much of the work regarding the athletic center, especially the funding!
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Can you imagine the funding situation if not for the huge donor families that we have.Thank god for their generosity. And we are talking about families , not corporations.
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Just sad to me that we have not been able to get one outside major corporation to really help the local public university other than the security company that had the clock on the outside of the stadium. Well, one other tried too help!

Our FAU families have been fabulous with their generosity.
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GeorgiaOwl said

Just sad to me that we have not been able to get one outside major corporation to really help the local public university other than the security company that had the clock on the outside of the stadium. Well, one other tried too help!
Posted On: Aug 7th 2016, 4:20 PM #357551

The problem is that previous administrations (Angelos-Era) made many missteps. We were out there trying to sell naming rights before the stadium was built when the economy was just coming out of the tank and we had non-business people trying to negotiate business deals utilizing pricing that appeared to be pulled from various body cavities. We were asking businesses to give money like we were a SEC school that had won the National Championship.

I am not joking about that.

Many business bridges were burned to the ground.  Now we have people in place who are capable of getting those deals but have to rebuild relationships and repair some of the damage.  That takes time.
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true.
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The issue with the naming rights isn't for a lack of trying.

It's due to a flawed strategy.  We were balls out to build the stadium without a keystone sponsor, i.e. naming rights.  The stadium is there now, has been built, and the draw isn't there.

That's the reason most projects don't get announced until there is a major donor and they don't get started until a significant portion of the capital is raised to minimize the debt service.
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sigep77 said

The issue with the naming rights isn't for a lack of trying.

It's due to a flawed strategy.  We were balls out to build the stadium without a keystone sponsor, i.e. naming rights.  The stadium is there now, has been built, and the draw isn't there.

That's the reason most projects don't get announced until there is a major donor and they don't get started until a significant portion of the capital is raised to minimize the debt service.
Posted On: Aug 9th 2016, 10:38 PM #357595

but there has been plenty of events besides football being held there to at least draw interest. IMHO I think the department is a little scared to pull the trigger on getting more naming rights because of backlash. Just a couple examples come to mind

1.) Chick-fil-A: President of company has been stated on the record in favor of traditional marriage, though his statments can be taken as anti-LGBT. (though the restaurant on campus has been a huge success.)

2.) Sikorsky and Pratt and Whitney: Linked to cancer clusters in Jupiter.

3.) Sugar companies; pollution of the Indian River Lagoon, and coastal waterways.

But that is my opinion.
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