Raymond James Stadium

Since they had operated Houlihan's Stadium for so .
             many years they had a base idea on what to charge for such things as tickets and .
             concession items. Due to the cost of building Raymond James all prices will be raised; .
             however, the basic scale of what to charge is already in place. Forecasting the .
             potential revenues and budgeting for expenses are required to run a successful .
             stadium. There are two types of planning, long-term and short-term, to help do this. .
             Short-term planning is used for decisions within a short time frame, which is usually .
             less than two years. Tampa Sports Authority undertook this method when they sold .
             the parking lot of Raymond James Stadium to the Buccaneers in order to generate .
             revenue for stadium construction. Long-term planning usually requires investments .
             that span over years. Whoever is investing in you must have confidence that you will .
             generate profit. The Tampa Sports Authority appealed to Hillsborough County in .
             order to raise the money to construct Raymond James Stadium. Seeing the profit .
             potential of such an investment the county passed a half-cent sales tax on Sept 3, .
             1996 in order to generate venture capital. (3) Between this tax increase and the money .
             invested by Tampa Sports Authority from their other holdings, the Palace Arena and .
             Legends Field, enough revenue was able to be generated to get the construction of .
             Raymond James underway. The last step of the financial planning process is .
             developing a pro forma budget. Raymond James Stadium had a project budget of .
             $168.5 million. (3) This budget involves planning out how much you can afford over .
             a certain time period. There is one big expense difference between operating .
             Houlihan's Stadium and Raymond James Stadium. While it only cost the Tampa .
             Sports Authority $3.7 million annually to run the old stadium, Raymond James costs .
             $5.4 million to run annually. This will need to be forecasted into their expenses to .