Doogie: Ticket sales for Friday's game "lacking in a very very troubling way"

[BleedGopher]

Doogie: Ticket sales for Friday's game "lacking in a very very troubling way"

In his latest Scoops Podcast, Doogie said that tickets for Friday's Gopher game at US Bank Stadium are "lacking in a very very troubling way."

http://www.1500espn.com/tag/the-scoop/

Go Gophers!!

 

[Zeppelin Gopher]

Is anyone surprised by this?? Tickets are absurdly priced.

Also, nice slap in the face to those who actually bought tickets to release a "buy one get one" on Cyber Monday. F off

 

[watertown 1987 guy n]

Its only troubling in that the developer of the Program at US Bank screwed up and didn't wrap this in with season ticket sales at the Barn. If it was a part of season tickets it would be on my radar, it its current form its one more thing that I need to put time in to evaluate & plan and frankly it fell through the cracks. Now I have very little interest in buy tickets that are 50 yards away from the court - or at least that's my perception of the tickets available. Like I said, one more thing to evaluate and at this point the least amount of friction in my life is to pass.

 

[Bryce Webster]

Is anyone surprised by this?? Tickets are absurdly priced.

Also, nice slap in the face to those who actually bought tickets to release a "buy one get one" on Cyber Monday. F off

Agreed - Bought 10 tickets a few weeks ago and then get the email on Monday about BOGO? What an absolute kick to the nuts.

 

[book]

I'm going but am more disappointed that they couldnt get two other major opponents to play - like iowa State, Marquette, Creighton, even Northern Iowa...

 

[UpAndUnder43]

Its only troubling in that the developer of the Program at US Bank screwed up and didn't wrap this in with season ticket sales at the Barn. If it was a part of season tickets it would be on my radar, it its current form its one more thing that I need to put time in to evaluate & plan and frankly it fell through the cracks. Now I have very little interest in buy tickets that are 50 yards away from the court - or at least that's my perception of the tickets available. Like I said, one more thing to evaluate and at this point the least amount of friction in my life is to pass.

its a neutral site game. I don't think they were allowed to include it in the season ticket package. We've gone over this like 20 times on this site.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

Doogie is awful. This doesn't affect the U's bottom line at all. He is a hack.

 

[Zeppelin Gopher]

I'm going but am more disappointed that they couldnt get two other major opponents to play - like iowa State, Marquette, Creighton, even Northern Iowa...

UNI is playing in event on Saturday, but agreed.

 

[gophereric30]

Is anyone surprised by this?? Tickets are absurdly priced.

Also, nice slap in the face to those who actually bought tickets to release a "buy one get one" on Cyber Monday. F off

Kind of find it funny how if wisconsin or iowa was on the undercard the place would be packed, but you just put the home team at 900 on a friday night, nobody wants anything to do with supporting the home team! When looking around this site the past few weeks it seemed the "plenty of good seats available" thread has turned into the "name your excuse and complain about how it isnt in your season ticket package" thread. Good chance to see a quality opponent and cheer on the gophers!

 

[Gopherbbdude]

It's a horrible venue for a basketball game....what did they expect

 

[bga1]

Kind of find it funny how if wisconsin or iowa was on the undercard the place would be packed, but you just put the home team at 900 on a friday night, nobody wants anything to do with supporting the home team! When looking around this site the past few weeks it seemed the "plenty of good seats available" thread has turned into the "name your excuse and complain about how it isnt in your season ticket package" thread. Good chance to see a quality opponent and cheer on the gophers!

It should have been in the season ticket package. Period. The season ticket holders- most of us holding the tickets for years and years (well over 30 for me) have paid for countless meaningless games over the years. They keep trotting out these garbage loyalty programs and trinket giveaways. Give us more good home games and less of that garbage. And when you schedule a good opponent consider your loyal core. I would gladly have paid the extra price in the season ticket package. This is just the stupid stuff they do over there that makes it hard to gain traction with the fans when the programs struggle on the field or on the court.

A couple of years ago they decided to rip the football season ticket holders off and look what happened to attendance. They just are not customer oriented.

Are you a season ticket holder?

 

[GuyFawkes]

It's a horrible venue for a basketball game....what did they expect

How do you know this? As far as I'm aware basketball has never been played there yet.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

I saw a tweet of how they are setting up the court. My question would be how much seating will be available courtside - especially on the side away from the football seats and toward what would be the 50-yd line of the football field.

It all comes down to cost. Yeah, watching a basketball game in a football stadium is never going to equal the feel of a basketball arena. I would think the football seats on three sides would provide at least a decent view of the court. but it comes down to "how much?" and how many people are willing to pay just to say they were there.

 

[saintpauljeff]

but you just put the home team at 900 on a friday night, nobody wants anything to do with supporting the home team!

Uh, this is part of the problem, some adults have many things to do on a Sat morning, sometimes real early, so going to a basketball game that will run until 11:30pm is completely impractical. Make it an 8pm start and I would have bought a handful of tickets. 9pm start? I bought nothing.

 

[gophereric30]

It should have been in the season ticket package. Period. The season ticket holders- most of us holding the tickets for years and years (well over 30 for me) have paid for countless meaningless games over the years. They keep trotting out these garbage loyalty programs and trinket giveaways. Give us more good home games and less of that garbage. And when you schedule a good opponent consider your loyal core. I would gladly have paid the extra price in the season ticket package. This is just the stupid stuff they do over there that makes it hard to gain traction with the fans when the programs struggle on the field or on the court.

A couple of years ago they decided to rip the football season ticket holders off and look what happened to attendance. They just are not customer oriented.

Are you a season ticket holder?

I am not a season ticket holder. I live in chicago, but have thought about getting season tickets and coming up for a certain amount of games each year. Last year my wife and i came up for the indiana game and made a weekend out of it. So much easier now to just fly as they have the tram from airport. Anyways, is the reason its not on the ticket plan because of us bank or is this on the university of Minnesota? People on here have been saying the University didnt have a say in the matter! Sounds like your a loyal fan and have supported the gophers for many years, so you know more about the situation than i do.

 

[Gopherbbdude]

How do you know this? As far as I'm aware basketball has never been played there yet.

have you ever been to a Bball game in a football stadium? It sucks!

 

[bga1]

I am not a season ticket holder. I live in chicago, but have thought about getting season tickets and coming up for a certain amount of games each year. Last year my wife and i came up for the indiana game and made a weekend out of it. So much easier now to just fly as they have the tram from airport. Anyways, is the reason its not on the ticket plan because of us bank or is this on the university of Minnesota? People on here have been saying the University didnt have a say in the matter! Sounds like your a loyal fan and have supported the gophers for many years, so you know more about the situation than i do.

They say they didn't have a choice. I don't believe it. At worst they could have offered it as an ala carte selection on the season ticket package- ie. do you want to pay for the extra game at X price or not( and get the best seats in the house)? Most would have opted in. I think they were just afraid to hike the price of season tickets by adding the extra game. Now they are going to have a poorly attended game and the Gophers lose the advantage of a big home town crowd. It is just another case of our athletic department not thinking in terms of the customer or the big picture.

 

[Holy Man]

It should have been in the season ticket package. Period. The season ticket holders- most of us holding the tickets for years and years (well over 30 for me) have paid for countless meaningless games over the years. They keep trotting out these garbage loyalty programs and trinket giveaways. Give us more good home games and less of that garbage. And when you schedule a good opponent consider your loyal core. I would gladly have paid the extra price in the season ticket package. This is just the stupid stuff they do over there that makes it hard to gain traction with the fans when the programs struggle on the field or on the court.

A couple of years ago they decided to rip the football season ticket holders off and look what happened to attendance. They just are not customer oriented.

Are you a season ticket holder?

Agreed 100%. The "neutral site can't include it in the ticket package" narrative has been bandied about, but there was none of that talk from the U. All I heard from them is this belongs to U.S. Bank and whoever manages their events and they were not allowed to put the game in the season package. Other suggestions are that this is not really an event but a dry run for the Final Four so the event part of it doesn't matter. I don't buy it. I think this was messed up and sadly will make it harder to get an annual double header here in the future. I for one, would be very open to a high quality one day double header on a regular basis.

 

[gophereric30]

They say they didn't have a choice. I don't believe it. At worst they could have offered it as an ala carte selection on the season ticket package- ie. do you want to pay for the extra game at X price or not( and get the best seats in the house)? Most would have opted in. I think they were just afraid to hike the price of season tickets by adding the extra game. Now they are going to have a poorly attended game and the Gophers lose the advantage of a big home town crowd. It is just another case of our athletic department not thinking in terms of the customer or the big picture.

True. It's like cubs season tickets where they give you first choice on the concerts at wrigley. They should have given you the option of buying the seats at whatever cost and you could just give them a yes or no. At least then it was an option with a chance to get the good seats.

 

[SelectionSunday]

On the bright side, as Ope pointed out earlier, if the Gophers win there's a better chance it will be a Quad 1 win as opposed to a Quad 2, or (more likely) a Quad 2 win as opposed to a Quad 3.

 

[Holy Man]

True. It's like cubs season tickets where they give you first choice on the concerts at wrigley. They should have given you the option of buying the seats at whatever cost and you could just give them a yes or no. At least then it was an option with a chance to get the good seats.

Truth be told, I do think there was a code for season ticket holders to use for a brief time before the sale went public. As I recall, the seat prices were outrageous though. I think we get something similar for concerts at TCF. My guess is that it's not a great deal, but they make you think you're special to take advantage of the offer.

 

[dpodoll68]

They say they didn't have a choice. I don't believe it. At worst they could have offered it as an ala carte selection on the season ticket package- ie. do you want to pay for the extra game at X price or not( and get the best seats in the house)? Most would have opted in. I think they were just afraid to hike the price of season tickets by adding the extra game. Now they are going to have a poorly attended game and the Gophers lose the advantage of a big home town crowd. It is just another case of our athletic department not thinking in terms of the customer or the big picture.

Agreed 100%. The "neutral site can't include it in the ticket package" narrative has been bandied about, but there was none of that talk from the U. All I heard from them is this belongs to U.S. Bank and whoever manages their events and they were not allowed to put the game in the season package. Other suggestions are that this is not really an event but a dry run for the Final Four so the event part of it doesn't matter. I don't buy it. I think this was messed up and sadly will make it harder to get an annual double header here in the future. I for one, would be very open to a high quality one day double header on a regular basis.

Pretty sure that you're both wrong. For neutral-site games, standard contract language is that the ticket revenue is owned by the stadium owners (this is true for both football and basketball). I have no reason to believe this particular game didn't utilize the standard approach. Since including a neutral-site game in a season ticket package would mean that the ticket revenue would be going to the school first, which the stadium owners would of course not be interested in allowing to happen (particularly because they're most likely paying some sort of guaranteed payout to both schools), I'm pretty sure that the U wasn't allowed to include this game in the season ticket package.

But you're probably right - the U of M is evil and is lying to you.

 

[howeda7]

Could the U have "bought" tickets from the stadium authority and "given" them to season ticket holders and then jacked up the ST price to cover it? And if so, wouldn't there be just as many complaints about that?

 

[Holy Man]

Pretty sure that you're both wrong. For neutral-site games, standard contract language is that the ticket revenue is owned by the stadium owners (this is true for both football and basketball). I have no reason to believe this particular game didn't utilize the standard approach. Since including a neutral-site game in a season ticket package would mean that the ticket revenue would be going to the school first, which the stadium owners would of course not be interested in allowing to happen (particularly because they're most likely paying some sort of guaranteed payout to both schools), I'm pretty sure that the U wasn't allowed to include this game in the season ticket package.

But you're probably right - the U of M is evil and is lying to you.

Maybe you could write the script for phone bank staff at the ticket office. What you say is perfectly understandable. If it is the case, the U could have communicated to us. They didn't. They messed up. That doesn't make them evil. It makes them either incompetent or uncaring about their customers.

 

[dex8425]

I was going to purchase tickets and saw there were $13 tickets available still. [looks at seating chart] okay, those aren't going to be great seats, but still better than watching at home. [looks at game start time] Actually, maybe watching at home would be better. [puts tickets in cart anyway, because, gopher basketball] Wait, 50 dollars including ticket fees?! Nope, I'll pass.

Even with the bogo the fees were still there so it ended up being a 13 dollar ticket for about 40 dollars.

 

[Gophers09]

I was going to purchase tickets and saw there were $13 tickets available still. [looks at seating chart] okay, those aren't going to be great seats, but still better than watching at home. [looks at game start time] Actually, maybe watching at home would be better. [puts tickets in cart anyway, because, gopher basketball] Wait, 50 dollars including ticket fees?! Nope, I'll pass.

Even with the bogo the fees were still there so it ended up being a 13 dollar ticket for about 40 dollars.

This, and this, and this.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

This, and this, and this.

Yeah, fees suck. But the fees exist because of ticketmaster, who is contracted by the stadium owners. This has nothing to do with the U.

I will tell you though, a lot of fees are hidden within season tickets. You just don't get a breakdown of where that money goes.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

This is more than I expected:

Some 15,000 fans are expected to show for each evening’s games this weekend. Tickets, starting at $15 per evening, are still available.

 

[HOOP DREAMS]

I was going to purchase tickets and saw there were $13 tickets available still. [looks at seating chart] okay, those aren't going to be great seats, but still better than watching at home. [looks at game start time] Actually, maybe watching at home would be better. [puts tickets in cart anyway, because, gopher basketball] Wait, 50 dollars including ticket fees?! Nope, I'll pass.

Even with the bogo the fees were still there so it ended up being a 13 dollar ticket for about 40 dollars.

Can you just buy them at the door and avoid the fees? I'm considering it.

 

[UpAndUnder43]

Did Doogie say who this is troubling for? SMG can't really care. They make so much off this stadium, this is small potatoes for them. Test run to the Final 4 where they are making all sorts of $$$$$