How My College Buddy Made 7 Seven Figures from Tailgating

My college buddy had a tailgating monopoly and made many 7 figures working 7 days per year.

Below is how the biz worked. (Still viable today)

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Around the time Nick Saban arrived at Alabama, tailgating on "the quad" was a mess.

Students and families would stake their claim in the grass days before kickoff, because there was no better way.

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There was no order to it, fights would often break out and it looked terrible.

Sam thought there should be a better way, so he sat down with University of Alabama officials and said

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"I can fix this."

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His solution? Give him a monopoly and let him sell spots on the most valuable piece of Alabama real estate on the most valuable 7 days of the year:

The 7 home game days

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Why would Alabama agree to this? Why even try to shoot such an outrageous full court shot?

Because sometimes an outsider is needed to be the one to piss people off, to be the bad guy.

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Well, Sam isn't the smoothest of talkers, but his business partner Nick was very well connected. In the old school, old money south, it helps to know people.

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With Sam's business plan and Nick's connections and sales skills, they inked a multi-year contract, with options to extend. They'd also share a small % of revenue with the University.

Gameday Tents would be allowed to rope off the most coveted 22 acres of tailgating spots on campus, 4 days before every home game.

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Then they purchased hundreds of canopies and white tents, 10x10 being the smallest. Let's be clear: this was a logistics heavy business.

How much did the tiny 10x10s cost? Up to $1,000+ for 1 game! But that was the "get in" price. The other tents got much, much more expensive than that.

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Add-ons included

- A TV
- Catered foods
- Drinks
- Tables and chairs
- Custom signage

The average ticket was several thousands of dollars.

Customers included students, wealthy families and Alabama corporations.

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Mathematically speaking, you can fit 9,571 10x10 tents on 22 acres, but there was nowhere near that many. I would guess there were around 400 tents of various sizes every Saturday.

At an average ticket size of $2,500, that’s $1,000,000 grossed every gameday!

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All of the tents and expenses were paid for on the first game of the year, and after that the profits really got stupid.

Oh, and did I mention that the university of Alabama would even help him advertise, by emailing all the students about this new setup?

After their first couple seasons they'd even set up shop at bowl games across state lines.

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He never ever had trouble selling out a space, and prices went up every year.

What happened to Gameday Tents? Truthfully, I don’t know exactly. I haven’t spoken to Sam in about 5 years.

I know he sold the business to one of his wealthy customers and it was a good outcome. It looks like they are still in business under the name Gameday Done Right.

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I love this story because it's a great example of what one idea, one contact, on contract or one person can do.

My family and I will be there using them in about an hour. They're patiently waiting for me to finish this post so we can leave the hotel. We go to a game every year.

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Roll Tide! Follow me @mhp_guyfor more cool biz write ups like this.