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This was likely a very easy decision for Batt.
According to the AJC article this is worth $10M vs $2M for a home game. That $8M is 1/3 of the likely NIL amount needed yearly.
Given GT has a small fanbase (GT is the smallest public P4 school in the country in terms of undergrad population - which is all that really matters as most grad students are not paying attention to college sports while they are there), so GT has to be aggressive and creative in finding ways to increase revenue if it wants to try to stay in the top level of college football.
GT is not a large state school - those are the ones with the massive sports budgets both because they have exponentially more alumni, but also because they tend to be the 'state' school so they have more sidewalk fans. Also, GT's student body demographics are significantly different than the typical college football fan demographics, so a lower percentage of GT students are likely to be interested in college football than other state schools.
As much talk is made of media contracts, they are NOT the drivers in the difference in revenues for college sports programs - the driver is revenue that schools can make off of attendance at home football and basketball games. Ohio State makes more than $100M in revenue just from its home football games. Basically similar as our total budget. Last year SEC Schools received less than $7M more from their media contracts than ACC schools, but their budgets tend to be multiple tens of millions of dollars more than ACC schools because they create so much more revenue from their alumni/fanbase.
If GT can find an opponent that would bring in similar amounts of revenue at MBS I would expect GT to continue to play a game at MBS indefinitely. This is just something GT is going to have to do to try to improve its revenue line item.
According to the AJC article this is worth $10M vs $2M for a home game. That $8M is 1/3 of the likely NIL amount needed yearly.
Given GT has a small fanbase (GT is the smallest public P4 school in the country in terms of undergrad population - which is all that really matters as most grad students are not paying attention to college sports while they are there), so GT has to be aggressive and creative in finding ways to increase revenue if it wants to try to stay in the top level of college football.
GT is not a large state school - those are the ones with the massive sports budgets both because they have exponentially more alumni, but also because they tend to be the 'state' school so they have more sidewalk fans. Also, GT's student body demographics are significantly different than the typical college football fan demographics, so a lower percentage of GT students are likely to be interested in college football than other state schools.
As much talk is made of media contracts, they are NOT the drivers in the difference in revenues for college sports programs - the driver is revenue that schools can make off of attendance at home football and basketball games. Ohio State makes more than $100M in revenue just from its home football games. Basically similar as our total budget. Last year SEC Schools received less than $7M more from their media contracts than ACC schools, but their budgets tend to be multiple tens of millions of dollars more than ACC schools because they create so much more revenue from their alumni/fanbase.
If GT can find an opponent that would bring in similar amounts of revenue at MBS I would expect GT to continue to play a game at MBS indefinitely. This is just something GT is going to have to do to try to improve its revenue line item.
