@Rational what are you wasting time on this board? If you promise 8% return you should be a top portfolio manager
A more realistic assumptions is 5%.
Then you have inflation at 2.5%, which leaves you 2.5% to spend in perpetuity. $10Mm does not get you far enough nowadays.
Conversations I’ve heard with Ivy leagues about adding a new WP programs, the starting number to endow one new program is around $6Mm. This pays for HC+AC+pool+traveling. Add scholerships and you lare at $8-$10Mm of endowmnet money.
@homesteadjoe divvy it up however you want @wp2024 just round numbers - maybe I have a congressman friend and can match them to swing +25% RoR
One issue with college is Title IX - for instance, would the Univ of Arizona accept $5mm to start just a men’s team. More than likely, you’d have to fund both a men’s and women’s program - so there goes adding just women at Pepperdine or just men at ASU - unless you also want to fund an offsetting field hockey team.
Endow the NL with $10 million to establish a $500,000 annual prize for the league champion. This will create incentives for greater investment in teams, encourage players to extend their post-NCAA careers, attract European ringers, and draw interest from ESPN and Vegas!
I’d run a five-year plan with an annual budget of $2m per year. Of that, $1.5m per year would go to lobbying state and local politicians in sun-belt states to enact a government funded youth sports subsidy modeled on Southern European countries that benefits water polo. The remaining $500k per year would go toward a 5-year publicity campaign in those same sun belt states.
I’d spend every dime promoting 10u, 12u, and 14u in areas of the country where public pools are outdoors. $10m is not that much money. If that is the budget, I’d use all of it priming the pump.
Even using wp2024’s $6mm number, the ROE to endow a program at Yale or Penn would be exceptional.
The market rate on a spot at Yale or Penn is in the high 7 figures. Maybe 8.
So 5 new spots a year values at around $50mm. Even if you can only monetize 2% of this value per year via donations ($50k per year per admit), that’s a 17% return.
Pull the $6mm out after it’s replaced in 6 years with new player capital and move on to Cornell and Columbia and Dartmouth.
Nothing will attract dedicated families of means to underwrite the sport (clubs, NL, etc) like an additional hundred Ivy League roster spots.
Oh and I would write a cap on internationals into the coaches’ contracts… I admire that you have top 10 aspirations, but I need my money paid back…
I think there is a good reason why when the NFL set about making flag football for girls a thing, it didn’t start by subsidizing women’s flag football at universities. If you grow the sport in the age groups that will become their prospective pool of applicants, universities will add those programs to attract applicants. We are seeing exactly that with flag football.
Follow the path girl’s flag football is using to great success.
Just found this at Brown. The number I heard was from Penn. I assume the $6M is for one gender, and thus $12M for both.
Am I understanding your idea correctly? Find six donors, each contributing $1M, and pitch the idea of starting a self-funded new Ivy League water polo program—with the added benefit of attracting another 10 quality candidates and bringing in additional donations?
It’s a win-win: donors get a “discount” from your typical 7–8 figure price tag, and colleges gain a fully funded athletic program that attracts high-quality applicants.
Exactly! Had not seen that re Brown but idea is do that on day 1 to launch a program. Need universities to sign off on the incremental athletes, which maybe requires they get some of that donor $ as well.
I like the “Ivy league growth plan” but would pools / facilities be an obstacle?
Brown, Harvard, Princeton already in
Cornell, Yale - 6 lane, 25yd shallow deep
Dartmouth, Columbia - 8 lane, 25 yd shallow deep
University of Pennsylvania - 6 lane, 40 yards? pics show bulkhead
Agree that’s an impediment. Polo stakeholders can get a seat at pool renovation discussions. That’s maybe a USAWP lobbying job, but a couple $mm out of my original $10mm might suffice.
Eg here’s the latest on Yale pool I found. Note that a key proponent of the reno, swim and diving association president Matt Meade, specifically mentions accommodating polo in the proposed improvement:
“I know it’s been a source of frustration; we have a very passionate group of alumni, who, you know, want to see this pool built more than anything, and I certainly understand their frustration and their desire to turn this program, turn this facility into the best possible opportunity for Yale to succeed in the pool — in diving, swimming and water polo,” Meade said.
I have a close friend who swam at Yale. The situation with their pool is beyond anger at this point. They have alumni who just won’t donate to the school until a new pool is built.
Entrepreneurship:
This is an opportunity for USA Water Polo (USA WP) to demonstrate leadership and capitalize on the situation by offering a $500K (placeholder figure) grant, interest-free loan, or other creative financial structure to help build a new pool, conditional upon starting an NCAA water polo team. Additionally, USA WP could galvanize donors toward raising a $6M+ endowment.
Why should USA WP do this?
The multiplier effect on increasing membership could be significant. A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that adding one additional Ivy League program could conservatively increase membership by 3% (roughly 30 Division I schools exist, so about 3% per new school, with an Ivy likely having a larger impact than average).
40,000 members × 3% = 1,200 new members
Annual revenue per member: $150 in membership fees + $150 from tournament participation = $300 per member
1,200 members × $300 = $360,000 in additional annual revenue (even with conservative assumptions)
This would represent a strong return on investment.
Although these numbers are unresearched, they could easily be quantified to support a formal business case.
With 40,000 existing members paying an average of $100 per year, a $10 increase in membership fees alone could fund this initiative to strategically grow the ‘enterprise.’
Bring in Myrtha to do an above ground steel pool off campus. No excavation, no concrete. Fraction of traditional pool cost. Olympics, World Champs, ISL have used these for years. Takes a few weeks to put up a 50m x 8 lane pool. Paris 2024 used one.
