After the idea of canceling LSU’s Nov. 19 home football game against South Alabama was floated as one of the possible ways for LSU and Florida to make up their postponed Oct. 8 game, Visit Baton Rouge President and CEO Paul Arrigo sent a short email to Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey.
Arrigo says he wrote the commissioner to encourage the SEC to keep the Nov. 19 game in Baton Rouge for economic and morale reasons, considering everything the city and its residents have endured during the summer.
“I thought that we should make the commissioner aware that the game has serious economic and morale implications for the people of Baton Rouge,” Arrigo says, adding that he felt he wouldn’t be doing his job if he hadn’t reached out to Sankey. “We hate to lose a home game.”
Cancelling the LSU-South Alabama game and having the Tigers travel to Florida instead is one of several scenarios that have been proposed as options to reschedule the game, which was postponed due to Hurricane Matthew.
The idea of canceling the home game against the Sun Belt Conference team may appeal to some fans as the most plausible scenario, but for LSU—and the Baton Rouge economy—it would come with a significant financial hit.
LSU would have to pay South Alabama $1.5 million to forfeit the game and could lose an estimated $3 million in gameday revenue. And according to a 2014 study economist Loren Scott produced for the Tiger Athletic Foundation, a seven-game home season generates roughly $62.8 million in Louisiana, with $47.7 million of that being spent in the four-parish Baton Rouge area.
That’s about $6.8 million per game in Baton Rouge—with restaurants and hotels particularly benefit from visitors coming to the city for LSU games.
Ruffino’s Chef Jeremy Langlois, who is also president of the local chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, says the loss of the LSU-South Alabama game would definitely have a negative impact on restaurants. “LSU sports, and stuff like that, plays into the economy as a whole,” he says.
“We make budgets, we looks at events coming up … If all of a sudden that game went away we would have to rewrite the budget for that day,” Langlois adds.
For example, Ruffino’s is preparing to serve 800 people the night before the upcoming LSU-Alabama game on Nov. 5 in Tiger Stadium. If that game were to go away—which hasn’t been suggested—Langlois says the restaurant would be faced with feeding approximately 300 diners instead.
—Alexandria Burris
