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Record Spring Fling attendance may still cost UA money

Computer glitch may have directed more profits to

Despite record attendance at this year's off-campus Spring Fling, the UA student-run carnival might still end up losing money, the carnival's director said.

Craig Haubrich, executive director of Spring Fling, said a number of factors affected the carnival's overall profit.

"To be honest, as it's looking right now, we lost money," Haubrich said.

A computer glitch may have caused Spring Fling to pay the carnival company, Ray Cammack Shows, more money then they needed to, he added.

The company is supposed to get 65 percent of the profits made from the rides, 30 percent of all game revenue and 25 percent of the three food stands it had at the carnival, Haubrich said.

Haubrich said the company's profit doubled the $36,000 they made in 1998 when the carnival was open all four days, which made the directors want to go over all the numbers again.

Haubrich added that "5,000 people shouldn't compromise a double (in profits)."

Haubrich will go over the figures again with his accounting staff, and the final numbers will be available later this week, he added.

On the University of Arizona side, 87 clubs and organizations participated in the April 13 to 16 carnival and made about $80,000.

The clubs were expected to break $100,000 and they originally made $120,000, but costs and fines cut out of their profits, Haubrich said.

"The place where they (the clubs) lost a lot of money is in commercial games," he added.

Those organizations had to buy the prizes they gave out and a lot of the clubs gave out the big prizes first instead of giving out little prizes and having patrons work their way up to the big prizes, Haubrich said.

This ended up hurting the clubs because the carnival company would take inventory of the prizes at the end of each day and charge the club for the prizes given out, he said.

Organizations and clubs are given the games at random because some games, like the water games, have a winner every time and they make more money, Haubrich said.

Haubrich, who will return as Spring Fling director next year, said there is some discussion that the overall revenue of all the games might be split among the clubs, but nothing is final.

Construction of the Integrated Learning Center caused Spring Fling to be moved to Rillito Downs, 4502 N. First Ave., this year.

The record attendance could have been due to the free admission or the new location, said Alison Hicks, Spring Fling marketing director.

Hicks said the directors would have to look at statistics from more than one year before any decisions would be made about keeping the carnival off campus.

"We could have had one great year because of the free admission and it could have nothing to do with the move (to Rillito Downs)," she said. "This has been one year. I think we need to give it two years."

Hicks said a number of factors will be considered before Spring Fling's final location will be decided.

First the Spring Fling directors will see how the clubs did financially. The directors will get student input on the new location and how the community liked the new location, Hicks said.

Hicks said she received about 100 e-mails last week from people in the community expressing how much they liked the new location.

People felt the Rillito Downs was more accessible than the UA campus, Hicks said.

Hicks added that many people from the community said the UA campus is intimidating, especially if they don't have a child who goes to school here.

Haubrich said a demographic survey was given to about 4,000 people at the entrance of Spring Fling and less than 100 of them liked UA more than Rillito.

Since the decision to keep the carnival off campus will not be decided anytime soon, the directors will focus on improving the carnival at Rillito Downs for next year, Hicks said.

The directors need to work more with Pima County officials on how to better handle the crowds, she said.

"They (Pima County) didn't anticipate that we'd do that well," Hicks said.

Some students complained that there was not enough transportation. Next year transportation is something the directors will improve on, she added.

"Ideally we want both the community and students to be happy," Hicks said.