UH football not just losing players, but paying fans too

Healthy quarterbacks, running backs and inside linebackers aren’t the only people the University of Hawaii football team is running out of these days.

Paying customers are also in critically short supply.

And the latest deflating loss, 20-10 at San Diego State on Saturday, doesn’t figure to help.

Less than four months into the fiscal year, UH is looking at the possibility of a $500,000 — or more — shortfall in football ticket revenue this year because attendance has dropped to its lowest levels since the 0-12 season of 1998.

Through four of seven scheduled home games, the Rainbow Warriors have attracted an average of 25,263 through the Aloha Stadium turnstiles. That’s a per game drop of 2,096 from last year and nearly a 9,000 plunge from four years ago.

Not since 1998, when UH averaged 24,763 through four games, has attendance dipped as low at the same point.

Attendance at the last home game, Wyoming, was 20,405, the smallest for a UH home game at Aloha Stadium since the Northwestern game of 1998, the penultimate contest of that cursed season.

The result is that with three home games left, the $3,865,000 in ticket revenue the athletic program had projected figures to fall well short of the target.

Football, the athletic department’s biggest money-producing sport, will still make money, of course, just not enough to carry as much of the load for the 21-team program as had been counted upon. Football ticket revenue alone accounts for approximately 12 percent of the $32 million budget for the department and a slight upturn had been hoped for coming off the 1-11 season of 2013.

Even had UH hit the ticket revenue projection, the athletic department was still forecasting a $1,484,916 deficit, athletic director Ben Jay told the UH Board of Regents in August.

Now, barring a surge of walk-up sales for the remaining games — Nevada, Utah State and Nevada-Las Vegas — that deficit is expected to grow to $2 million or more. This at a time when President David Lassner has said the upper campus is fighting its own bottom line battles and is disinclined to write checks on behalf of athletics, looking to the community and Legislature to assist instead.

UH had hoped that the victory over Wyoming, if followed up by a good performance in San Diego, would stamp UH as a contender in the Mountain West Conference’s West Division and reignite sales. But at 2-5 and with the most attractive names on the home schedule — Washington and Oregon State — already behind it, UH’s prospects at the gate are increasingly dour.

The additional financial struggles come at a time when UH is attempting to underwrite training table meals and other benefits for its athletes in order to remain competitive in recruiting.

In coming weeks, UH expects to get some of its injured players back. Regaining paying fans, however, is looking more problematic.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.