I'm almost never on here, but I was actually looking for some info when I saw this... SO...here is why a Conference team is so costly and why you generally try to have multiple sponsors:
Conference Fee (went up $700) - $6500 Uniforms (14 players + coach) - $4125 Equipment Buy in (14 x $300) - 4200
Which equals $14,825... and you have played a game yet.
Now let's look at events. Each event you have 14 players so you need hotel rooms. 7 rooms x an average of $70 a night = $980 in hotel expense for each of the 7 events $6860 for your NON world events. Some are more but some are a bit less, but $70 should be a decent average. Next rental cars, in most cases you won't need a bunch of rental cars but on average you need 2 mid sized or SUV style vehicles. Average cost per vehicle $175 x 2 = $350 x 7 = $2450. Finally the big cost...airline tickets. Now in most cases you generally try to minimize cost of travel by playing some events close to home or that you can drive to..still all that really does is lower the total cost, so for this example we'll use a low cost air fare of $300 on average x 11 (usually you'll have a few guys that don't need to fly) per team $3300 per event.
So $6860 + $2450 + ($3300 x 7 events = $23,100) = $32,410
So 14,825 (up front) and an additional $32,410 spent throughout the season = $47,235 per season.
Yes there are ways to minimize this number...lowering it by as much as 40% even (Still $28,341 for the season).
Why retire? Because $47,235 is a pretty decent annual salary... No you won't retire on it, but spend that in 5 years on the Conference and you've spent close to $240K... so retire or partner with someone else and spend half that... only way it make sense anymore.
Either way, I wish Mark and Art the best. Both are good dudes and I have nothing but respect for them both.