Finley Stadium hosted the TSSAA BlueCross Bowl this past December for the first time.
Finley Stadium had a net income of $378,937.15 through the first six months of this current fiscal year.
Those two facts are not unrelated.
The success of the nine state football championship contests, which included trophy celebrations for McCallie and South Pittsburg, resulted in a record July-to-December surplus for the 20,412-seat facility built in 1997. Finley Stadium executive director Chris Thomas said Tuesday that the BlueCross Bowl yielded more than $100,000 in food and soft drink sales, which topped the amount for the entire University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football and Chattanooga FC soccer seasons combined.
“It basically tripled what we were expecting based on what had occurred at Tennessee Tech,” Thomas said. “We learned a lot, and the facility was great and we responded fine, but the concessions is where we really had the most trouble. The rest of the world is in a labor crisis, and so are we, but we’re seeing more of an interest this year in people wanting to work. I think we’ll be a lot stronger this year and a lot more prepared.