After this year it's safe to say that the Surly Horns tailgate is the best tailgating experience available to the public on the 40 acres, and the largest most attended tailgate for all away games. Demand has been incredibly high for Arkansas and Nashville, but due to family, time constraints, budget concerns and honestly burnout I just tapped out on those.
This year assuming there is no home playoff or bowl game I will have spent 145,000+ dollars on in person community related events excluding the sugar bowl (320k+ including sugar bowl)
We will have around a 7-12k loss (depending on if you count reusable equipment or not) on the 145k this year and if you include the sugar bowl it's the same because I gave ALL the profit to Texas One Fund ($100k+ from a single day event raised)
Next season is going to be very heavy away demand and still a great snowball building of home game demand. It's important to distinguish this from off campus tailgates - we are literally 30 seconds from LCL and less than 300 seconds from the stadium gates.
I'm going to need ~225k raised in order to really do it right and justify the time investment and pay someone to actually run the events side and just host/provide vision.
Out of that 225k we will have a gate - all home games based on feedback from this year will be $25 per person per game for members of Treefiddy, Burnt Ends, OnTexasFootball, or Texas One Fund. For non members normal home games will be $40 and high demand home games (like Georgia this year) will be $65. I can also offer a premium experience with guaranteed seating and climate control for $250/game for the home games or 1350 for the season per person.
Away games will be all inclusive only, with optional alcohol or not. Food and NA will be $85 per adult, $45 per minor and $20 per child. Full on will be $165 per adult. Premium will start at $300 per person including children and will have special perks when available.
I want to do this outside of the Surly corporate entity and investors will receive shares equivalent to the amount contributed and all revenue will be distributed monthly during the season so that its all done before 12/31 for tax purposes. All profits will be distributed or rolled over into the next years "investment pool".
I'm doing this because I'm tired of carrying this risk solo and I need to open this up to continue even without my involvement.
Right now we average 175-225 people per tailgate at home and have sold out every single ticketed event we have ever done (Georgia 400+, Michigan 750+), including over 2500 sold for the sugar bowl. We have a loyal returning population of over 500 for home games and an email distribution for all of those persons that we only promote these events and nothing else to.
We have a live production at every tailgate as well and each one both home and away also includes a watch party for those who don't have tickets. There are additional broadcast and licensing opportunities here that are under-leveraged as well.
There are significant merchandising opportunities that have gone pretty much untouched because I couldn't juggle that many balls. The sugar bowl where we had an official merch booth they netted over 45k in sales in a single day. I'm confident at Georgia with an average purchase of $25 we would have been able to sell upwards of 10k+ in merch.
This isn't gonna be a big money maker for anyone involved, but that's not the point and hasn't been the motivation up to this point. We have built something special. A low cost fan and community experience that is football centric and NIL friendly with an approachable every fan is welcome vibe in an environment filled with bullshit and grift where it's more about being seen than it is about getting juiced for the game and celebrating with horns of all sizes shapes colors and ages.
I can't promise breakeven, but I can promise minimal losses post distribution. Surly (me personally) will obviously be a significant contributor and shareholder.
Let's start the conversation and set the expectation here and I'm happy to take the discussion private for those interested in doing this.
If we don't do this I'm quite frankly just done with Tailgate. I'm completely tapped out on the stress it brings financially and operationally if we don't figure out a different way forward that isn't 100% dependent on me.