It cost almost $400,000 for Ball State University to go to the International Bowl based on current projections.
Randy Howard, associate vice president, finance and assistant treasurer, said when the numbers are finalized in about a month, it will cost Ball State about $395,000.
Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tom Collins said the costs of the game did not surprise him.
"It gave us the exposure we needed," Collins said. "Hopefully we get the bounce off that, more students to enroll, more alumni to donate money and more ticket sales next year."
Howard said travel vouchers are still filing in and the university is still adding up the expenses.
The total expenses will be about $455,000, Howard said, and Ball State made about $60,000 in revenue.
The costs of the bowl game are actually an investment, Howard said. By playing in the bowl game, Ball State gained a lot of visibility, he said.
Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communications, also said the bowl trip was an investment in visibility for Ball State.
The university not only got coverage in Muncie but all across Indiana, the United States and Toronto, Proudfoot said.
It also allowed the university to connect with its alumni, he said, and the bowl game was also a reward for the student athletes.
Proudfoot said the exposure Ball State got from the game being on ESPN2 exceeded the costs of the trip. He compared the $395,000 bill to commercials that aired during the game. A 30-second commercial during the game cost $13,500, Proudfoot said, meaning each minute cost $27,000. At that rate, $395,000 would buy less than 15 minutes of commercials.
The game, excluding commercials, was on television for two and a half hours, Proudfoot said.
"This is going to pay off for the university in the short term and the long term," he said.
When Western Michigan University went to the 2007 International Bowl, Howard said, it cost the university $303,000.
It cost Ball State more because of the universities' locations and the weakening of the American dollar, Howard said.
Western Michigan is closer to Toronto and thus used chartered buses to go to the game, Howard said. Also, when Western Michigan went to the game about 85 cents American equaled one Canadian dollar while it is now almost one to one, he said.
"I would say we did as well or better [than Western Michigan]," Howard said.
Howard said the Mid-American Conference gets the $750,000 payout from the International Bowl. The money the participating school, Ball State, gets from the game is whatever it sells in tickets, he said. It does not have to pay for unsold tickets, Howard said.
MAC Commissioner Rick Chryst could not be reached for comment.
The biggest expense of the trip will be meals, hotels and travel for people who were not on the team's chartered plane such as the band, cheerleaders and trustees, Howard said. In all those expenses equal about $200,000, he said.
The charted plane that the team took cost about $85,000, Howard said. Buses for the team when it was in Toronto cost about $30,000, he said.
It cost about $25,000 for wages of people who would have been done working at the end of the regular season, Howard said. The cost for the additional practices and training that was required for the bowl was about $60,000, he said.
The cost for equipment and apparel, such as jerseys with the International Bowl logo on them, was about $55,000, Howard said.
"Hopefully we've all learned things from it and can be better prepared next time," Collins said.
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