Profit not a priority for Classic organizers

Officials scale back operations — and expectations — for third annual football game

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Gazette file photo County Executive Jack B. Johnson and Morris A. ‘‘Mike” Little, president of the Prince George’s Classic, visit in one of the luxury suites at FedEx Field during last year’s sparsely attended game. To cut expenses, this year’s game will be played at Bowie State University.

Then it rained — again.

But after two years of stormy weather, small crowds and disappointing financial results, Morris A. ‘‘Mike” Little, president of Prince George’s Classic Inc., is more realistic about this year’s game and its related events.

‘‘We’re not so much interested in turning a profit than we are paying for the event,” Little said. ‘‘We’re more interested in providing opportunities for local businesses.”

After putting on two games at a soggy FedEx — the NFL’s biggest stadium — this year’s contest will play out at Bowie State University’s Bulldog Stadium, a much smaller venue with about 3,000 seats. FedEx Field seats 91,665.

However, B&K Rental and Sales Co. in Upper Marlboro — which provides bleachers, scaffolding, grandstands and staging — is renting some 5,000 additional seats for the Bowie stadium. The company got a call from school officials three months ago requesting its services, said owner Billy Bunting.

Organizers of the Classic have apparently learned a hard lesson in sports economics.

‘‘We paid for it, but we took a huge loss,” Little said of the FedEx venue.

The inaugural event cost $1.7 million to produce, but lost about $750,000. Organizers spent $800,000 to present last year’s Classic, and lost roughly $375,000.

This year, Little and his fellow organizers are spending only $500,000 to put on the show. Roughly 11,500 fans saw last year’s overtime contest between North Carolina A&T and Morgan State University. Bowie State and North Carolina Central will play this year’s Classic game, scheduled for a 2 p.m. kickoff Sept. 30.

But of course, things would have been different with better weather, Little said. There were tornado warnings before the game two years ago. And just before last year’s game, after a month-long dry spell, record-setting rainfall saturated the area.

‘‘You can’t control the weather. Everyone knows [the Classic] has been rained on the past two years,” Little said. ‘‘It has never really given us the chance to assess what our ticket sales would’ve been like. People just aren’t going to come out in the middle of the rain.”

The rain didn’t threaten the Classic’s future, said Hubert ‘‘Petey” Green, a Classic organizer and president of the 150-member Prince George’s Black Chamber of Commerce in Oxon Hill.

‘‘Although we have been hampered by rain for the past two years, canceling the Prince George’s Classic has never crossed my mind,” Green said in a statement.

The Classic was expected to generate $15.1 million annually for the county’s economy, producing 268 jobs and $6 million in labor income, according to a Towson University study commissioned four years ago by the black chamber.

Now in its third year, the Classic has yet to reach that goal.

‘‘As part of that economic study, it was based on the assumption that we’d put 50,000 people in FedEx Field,” Little said.

Daraius Irani, director of applied economics and human services at Towson’s Regional Economic Studies Institute in Baltimore, which conducted the study, defended its projections, despite the operating losses in the past two years.

‘‘I think we’re in the ballpark in terms of economic impact,” Irani said. ‘‘We’re not brought in to do any post-event analysis.”

This year’s Classic is sponsored by Southwest Airlines, Columbia Bank, B&W Solutions, PhRMA and the Washington Informer.

Classic events include a battle of the bands, golf tournament, comedy show and college fair.

E-mail Marcus Moore at mmoore@gazette.net.