Defending The Alamo….Dome

George Strait and Reba McEntire will officially open Jerry Jones’ much ballyhooed Cowboys Stadium in Arlington this Saturday. By all accounts it’s an impressive facility with the bells and whistles befitting its $1.15 billion cost. The stadium’s inaugural year event calendar is equally as impressive as it includes five high profile college football games (BYU vs. Oklahoma, Texas Tech vs. Baylor, Texas A&M vs. Arkansas, the 2009 Big 12 Championship and the 2010 AT&T Cotton Bowl) along with the 2010 NBA All-Star game and the Cowboys home schedule.

Naturally, the new Cowboys Stadium is causing a lot of cities across the country to have a serious case of “stadium envy” as is true here in San Antonio given how often the city competes with Dallas to host events. As someone who has worked in the Alamodome for all 16 years of its existence (first while working for the Spurs and now during my 10+ years for the Valero Alamo Bowl), I get asked a lot of questions about the Alamodome and there are a couple of points I’d like to clarify.

1) It’s paid for! Prior to its May 1993 opening, the Alamodome was debt-free as the result of a five year ½ cent sales tax that was levied in 1988. Scores of sports facilities across the country are drowning in debt service and some like Seattle’s Kingdome even end up getting demolished before the debt is paid. City leadership deserves a thank you for getting the Alamodome built and paid for in an efficient and, I’d argue, relatively painless way. Speaking of efficient, San Antonio received a 65,000 football stadium and an 18,500 NBA basketball arena it can be proud of for a combined $366 million ($180 million for the Alamodome and $186 million for the AT&T Center). The Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks have state-of the-art buildings but with price tags to match as their combined facility costs exceeded $1.5 billion dollars.

2) The tax dollars spent to build the Alamodome was money well-spent. Built to allow San Antonio to bid on major amateur and college sporting events, the Alamodome has delivered tremendous value raising both the city’s profile through media exposure as well as generating a significant economic impact. While it would have been a grand slam if the Dome had helped lure an NFL team to town, that was never its primary intent and it’s unfair to keep judging its success against that fact. Conversely, one thing the community often overlooks is how the building helped keep the Spurs in San Antonio by giving them a place to play as they waited for their own arena. Can you imagine the difference in the national perception of San Antonio if it was referred to as that town the “lost the Spurs franchise” in the mid-1990s as opposed to the actual perception of San Antonio as “Home of the four-time NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs.”

3) Why continue to spend money on the Alamodome? In hindsight, it would have been smart to extend the ½ cent sales tax another couple of years to help build a reserve for annual maintenance and improvement. This surplus could have been used to keep the building updated and competitive as it’s always tough to get the public behind allocating additional public money for sports facilities. However, the building is debt-free and the return on investment is too great not to spend on future improvements.

For people questioning additional funding, I’d point to a five month stretch starting in December 2007. During this period, the Alamodome hosted the 2007 Big 12 Championship between #1 Missouri and #9 Oklahoma, the Valero Alamo Bowl between Penn State and Texas A&M and the 2008 Men’s NCAA Final Four. These three events alone combined for 162,381 of out-of town visitors, $120 million in direct economic impact and over 48 million television viewers.

It’s also important to note that taxpayer dollars are not going toward Alamodome expenses. In the last five years, state rebate funding given to the Alamodome for hosting events totaled $10 million and allowed the Alamodome to pay for such items as painting the exterior, upgrading the video walls and sound system, building out additional suites, upgrading the main entrance, carpeting the locker rooms and installing new football turf (the Dome now has the same turf that the Cowboys will have in their new stadium).

5) Size matters, but dollars matter more. While the Valero Alamo Bowl is partnering with the Alamodome to bring this year’s Notre Dame vs. Washington State game to San Antonio on October 31, the competition will be stiff for future neutral site football games especially when we bid against venues with more seating and suites. However, a bigger stadium does not mean more revenue unless the seats are sold. My bet is when you look back at the end of the first year at Cowboys Stadium the final attendance at the aforementioned events will be much closer to the Valero Alamo Bowl’s 61,000 average attendance than to the stadium’s possible capacity of 100,000 Jerry Jones has promoted and others have been quick to repeat.

In my experience teams and promoters are more focused on the bottom line than a building’s seating capacity or amenities. Revenue shortfalls because of fewer seats can be made up through hosting fees raised from corporate and city underwriting like was done to secure the 2007 Big 12 Championship. In this economy such funding is not easy to secure, but if the money is equal, I’d put San Antonio up as a destination for major sporting events against any other city in the nation. No other downtown lays out as conveniently for fans with hotels, restaurants, facilities and top attractions like the Alamo and the Riverwalk all within walking distance. Plus, when fans decide on which events to attend they are more concerned about what they’ll do for the 3-4 days they are in the city rather than just the 3-4 hours they’ll be in the stadium.

San Antonio’s reputation for hosting major sporting events is well-deserved. Let’s work together to come up with the best plan to keep the successful run going.

Rick Hill

3 Responses

  1. Jim Johnson says:

    Appreciate your insight. I remember reading an Express-News article about it costing $20 million to demolish the Dome. I’d agree that some $$$ here and there to keep it competitive is the right call.

  2. Great blog, Rick. You detail the issues around the Alamodome well. Count on San Antonio Sports to help “keep the successful run going.”

  3. Dean Aitken says:

    Isn’t the UT / OU game there as well? Have they found a title sponsor for it?