The University of Arizona spent more than $1.7 million on a festival sponsorship during two years  in which the school’s “accelerated spending” led to a multimillion dollar budget shortfall.

Officials said that while there’s a “cost to get in the door” at South by Southwest, the experience netted rich returns in the form of partnerships and opportunities for staff and students.

South by Southwest is an annual festival and conference in Austin that celebrates music, film, technology and culture. 

“It looks like we blew money on silly things, but it really isn’t,” Joellen Russell, department head for the UA’s geosciences department, told Tucson Spotlight. “We needed to get our foot in the door to talk to all the other people that are growing these innovation ecosystems.”

In March of 2022 and 2023, the UA sponsored a South by Southwest “experience house,” a hosted space where conference attendees “can immerse themselves in a brand’s products or a theme.”

Past experience house sponsors have included Paramount+, Dolby, Cheetos, LaCroix and the United Kingdom.

UA spokesman Mitch Zak said the UA’s Wonder House offered the school a “premier opportunity” and an international stage on which to showcase its academic and creative excellence.

“Over two years, the U of A highlighted more than 50 of its most accomplished faculty and students, engaging with over 20,000 qualified attendees through talks, workshops, film screenings, musical performances, art installations, tastings, and augmented reality/virtual reality and other technical demonstrations,” he wrote in an email.

The UA signed on to host an experience house for the first time at South by Southwest in 2020, but the festival was one of the first big events to be sidelined by the pandemic.

South by Southwest returned to the Austin Convention Center in 2022, with the UA’s website touting the school’s “major role” in welcoming the event’s return. The school partnered with Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao, located across the street from the convention center, as the site of its first Wonder House.

The Wonder House hosted “researcher talks about edible insects, ways to de-stress your environment and how to gather dust from the early solar system,” and also offered experiences including 360-degree virtual short films, multimedia art installations and special guest speakers.

The UA spent nearly $317,000 leading up to South by Southwest in 2020, before the event was ultimately canceled, according to public records obtained by Tucson Spotlight.

The school was able to use “many” of the 2020 credits for their 2022 Wonder House, but the records show that the UA spent an additional $550,000 on travel, staff, venue rentals, food and drink and miscellaneous expenses.

In 2023, Wonder House set up shop in Café Blue Downtown Austin, a block away from the convention center. The school advertised that it had ramped up its presence with a larger space and a longer stay.

The 2023 house showcased art, architecture, climate, space and society, with the venue boasting a surround stage and rooftop, and featuring  Sonoran-style cooking demonstrations, talks about cannabis research and a Tucson DJ spinning a mix of cumbia with Sonoran Desert Sounds.

In an article leading up to the event, the UA said faculty in areas including history, space science, health, architecture, arts, journalism, environmental science and more would share their expertise during the four-day event.

The 2023 Wonder House cost the UA nearly $843,000, with more than $500,000 of that going to Café Blue.

The UA also spent nearly $77,000 to pay for staff to travel to Austin for the event, more than $40,000 more than the previous year, and $122,000 on food and drinks for attendees. The school also reported spending nearly $50,000 on advertising, shipping, printing, supplies and “creative work.”

Geosciences Professor Russell was one of the university’s faculty presenters, giving a talk called, “Climate Data is Power to the People.” She said that while the UA did not pay for her to travel to South by Southwest, its staff helped her develop her presentation and pitch.

She called the event transformational, both personally and professionally, saying that the UA’s presence put both it and Tucson on the map.

“Before I went to South by Southwest, I would do maybe 10, maybe 15 media type interviews a year,” she said. “This last year, I did 55.”

Russell said that students who attended the event left with job offers and research opportunities, and faculty brought home new partnerships with funders and startups.

“It  made me realize where we should be in that ecosystem and by not participating, we’re denying our people the leg up that they deserve.,” she said. “The U of A is Southern Arizona‘s biggest employer. We had no biz not participating in America’s biggest front porch innovation fest.

University officials realized a few months after they returned to Tucson that the school had only 110 Days Cash on Hand, which was 30 days short of the amount required by ABOR. The $704.5 million the UA had access to on June 30, 2023 represented a drop of $140 million from the year before, according to the school’s financial update website.

Last November, former UA President Robert C. Robbins told the Arizona Board of Regents that the school had miscalculated that amount of Cash on Hand to the tune of $240 million. The number was reduced to $177 million by January, and by September it dropped to $65 million, following budget cuts and layoffs across campus.

The Arizona Daily Star reported earlier this month that the UA had cut 328 jobs between July 2023 and July 2024 in an effort to curb the deficit.

The school blamed  the decline on “accelerated spending from Fiscal Year 2022 to Fiscal Year 2023,” but also said the current financial challenges were decades in the making.

It also attributed the situation to increasing costs in athletics, the COVID-19 pandemic and rising inflation, and said revenues have not kept pace with rising costs, in part because of tuition discounts.

“It is important to note that the majority of spending across the University has been focused on strategic investments that benefit our students, faculty and staff,” the website says.

While Russell acknowledged that $1.7 million is no small price and it’s unlikely that the UA will return to South by Southwest in the next few years, she said the aftereffects of 2023’s event will keep her motivated as she continues to guide her department through the current financial situation.

“It really opened our eyes and helped form how we think of Arizona, the University of Arizona in particular, but Tucson, Arizona,” she said. “We see ourselves as the wonder house.”

Caitlin Schmidt is Editor and Publisher of Tucson Spotlight. She previously worked for the Arizona Daily Star and has been reporting on Southern Arizona for a decade. Contact her at caitlin@tucsonspotlight.org.

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