Courtney Baird works behind the main desk at the Eldridge Hotel, 701 Mass. The hotel fills up months - if not a full year - before major Kansas University home games.

Kansas UNIVERSITY Running Back Brandon McAnderson runs around the Nebraska defense for the Jayhawks' final touchdown of the day before a record crowd in the second half Nov. 3, 2007, at Memorial Stadium.

In Lawrence, sporting events are big money.

There are the tickets to the games and concession sales, too. Money for coaches and stipends for athletes.

But stepping back from the contests themselves, sporting events are big money for local businesses.

The hotels fill up months – if not a full year – before the actual events, and the booths at local restaurants are packed with friends and sometimes total strangers.

“Both football and basketball are packed houses,” said Nancy Longhurst, general manager of the Eldridge Hotel, 701 Mass. “With the game comes lots of activity in our hotel and bar. It’s a great atmosphere.”

Longhurst said her hotel is full virtually every weekend of the year, but the atmosphere is different during weekends when KU sporting events are the main attraction in town.

“KU provides us with a lot of visitors. We are very pleased to have KU in our community,” Longhurst said.

In fact, it’s KU events that cause the hotel to fill up the fastest. Longhurst said that aside from graduation weekend, which fills the hotel 364 days before the event, football game days book among the fastest. Home basketball games fill pretty quickly, too.

“It doesn’t matter particularly who the opponent is. We might get more calls for the big-name opponents, but we fill up for all of them,” Longhurst said.

Judy Billings, director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that football weekends are almost always “million dollar weekends, so long as the stadium is pretty full,” meaning each game pumps $1 million into the local economy. This year, KU set a single-game attendance record when the Nebraska Cornhuskers came to town, and a full-season attendance record as well.

The Jayhawks played seven home games, and not a single one had announced attendance less than 40,000 people.

Billings said that the increase in attendance this year likely didn’t do much to increase spending in Lawrence because so many hotels, bars and restaurants were already operating at full capacity.

Most likely, the extra people who came out this year were helping to enrich the economies of Topeka and Kansas City. But there was something even more important that went on, Billings said.

“What does matter is the publicity we get because of a successful football, basketball or any other team. That kind of publicity you can’t go out and buy or put a number on,” she said. “That’s where it ends up benefiting ultimately.”

The high level of demand gives hotels the opportunity to squeeze out a little bit more profit as well. Longhurst said it’s common practice in the industry to charge more per night during weekends where there’s some sort of major event going on.

In the case of the Eldridge, Longhurst said, the upcharge is perhaps $10 or $15.

For some businesses, though, Jayhawk sporting events can actually mean a dip in business, at least while the games are on. Subarna Bhattachan – one of the owners of La Parilla, Zen Zero and Genovese – said he sees more business before and after the games, but during the game it’s more of a lull.

“Winning football teams or basketball teams do bring people into town,” Bhattachan said. “Business though, it all depends, especially for us restaurants who are not sports bars. It’s hard to judge how good a big season is.

“The business increase during sports time is mostly for sports bars,” he said. “If the team loses, you’ll see nobody coming out. When we lost at Missouri, people were more gloomy. It seems like that mood descends on the public. If there’s a winning attitude, people come out and spend more.”

That was the case for Jefferson’s Restaurant during the NCAA Tournament, when the Jayhawks won the national championship.

Sarah Franklin, general manager for Jefferson’s, 743 Mass., said the Final Four games were as big or bigger than the Homecoming football game in the fall, which is typically one of the largest events of the year.

She brought in extra beer, extra bartenders and extra managers to help handle the crowd and make sure everything went smoothly.

The restaurant also required everyone to spend at least $20 per table per hour during the games.

Matt Llewellyn, managing partner at 23rd Street Brewery, 3512 Clinton Parkway, said his biggest days for business always come when the Jayhawks are playing – especially when they’re playing on the road.

And, no surprise, it’s even better when the Jayhawks bring home a win.

“The football season was a great,” he said in early March. “There seemed to be a lot of energy in Lawrence in November that is usually just anticipation for basketball season.”