Student Ticket Leftovers

[Iceland12]

From http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers

It looks like they're thinking about a sale to the public on any leftover Student Tickets.

"The Gophers began offering two-game ticket packages on Monday, combining tickets to the Sept. 11 South Dakota game with the Oct. 2 Northwestern game, or the Sept. 25 Northern Illinois game with Penn State's visit on Oct. 25. Roughly 1,000 of each package -- the tickets are mostly located in the corners, returns from the 3,000 set aside for the visiting team's fans -- will be sold, according to associate athletic director Jason LaFrenz, for $90 apiece.

And that, with the exception of scattered single-game tickets, will conclude the Gophers' ticket sale to the general public.

"We never had to put season tickets on sale to the public," LaFrenz said. "Our season tickets renewed at 93 percent, and the rest, about 2,500 season tickets, went fast to existing ticket-holders who wanted more. We're going to be sold out for the entire season again."

Some work remains: Only 6,000 of the allotted 10,000 student tickets have been sold, but school hasn't started and freshmen haven't been given a chance to buy yet, LaFrenz said. The school also is considering ways to temper what LaFrenz calls "a noticeable no-show factor" in the student section late last season, including putting leftover student tickets on sale to the public on Tuesdays before games."

 

[Iceland12]

I was hoping at least somebody would post "It's about time!"

 

[Gold Vision]

Interesting. I wonder if that means it will revert back into a voucher system. How did the student tickets work last year?

 

[strokemonster]

There is a god! I've been stressing(somewhat) that Pigeye and Becky fans have been snarfing, and I do mean snarfing, season tickets that were left over from our 93% renewal rate. Good to hear that our existing season ticket holders bought them up. I'm hoping the freshman students will make this "their" team and buy out the remainder of the student season tickets. A full and noisy house is a blast for all of us.

 

[2nd Degree Gopher]

Glad they are trying to address any problems, but there are two totally separate issues here that seem to be blended together in the story. One is that there are tickets from the student ticket allotment that have not yet sold. Not sure when the student season ticket sale closes, but if they don’t sell out once the students are all on campus, then those tickets could be made available to the general public (or students) on the Tuesday before a game. That makes sense.

The other issue is “no shows” which are tickets that are already sold, but which go unused. Those tickets can’t be re-sold unless they develop some type of a program allowing people to turn in tickets they aren’t going to use. The article doesn’t address all the ideas being considered to address the no-show issue, but “putting leftover student tickets on sale to the public on Tuesdays before games” isn’t dealing with no shows, it’s selling unsold tickets. If there is some plan to address no-shows, I’d like to hear about it.

 

[Gold Vision]

Glad they are trying to address any problems, but there are two totally separate issues here that seem to be blended together in the story. One is that there are tickets from the student ticket allotment that have not yet sold. Not sure when the student season ticket sale closes, but if they don’t sell out once the students are all on campus, then those tickets could be made available to the general public (or students) on the Tuesday before a game. That makes sense.

The other issue is “no shows” which are tickets that are already sold, but which go unused. Those tickets can’t be re-sold unless they develop some type of a program allowing people to turn in tickets they aren’t going to use. The article doesn’t address all the ideas being considered to address the no-show issue, but “putting leftover student tickets on sale to the public on Tuesdays before games” isn’t dealing with no shows, it’s selling unsold tickets. If there is some plan to address no-shows, I’d like to hear about it.

The article clearly says they will open up sales to the public to mitigate no-shows, not unsold student tickets. I imagine they are thinking about some sort of voucher system where a voucher that isn't redeemed gets re-sold.

 

[station19]

Could the Gophers sell Standing Room Only tickets like the Twins have been doing. When the student section does not fill up it's usually the top rows that are empty, the sro's could fill in those seats. I realize there could be a problem with the concourse being too busy.

 

[2nd Degree Gopher]

The article clearly says they will open up sales to the public to mitigate no-shows, not unsold student tickets. I imagine they are thinking about some sort of voucher system where a voucher that isn't redeemed gets re-sold.

You may be right that they are planning to shift to a voucher system, I have no idea. But that isn’t clear from the cited portion of the article, at least not to me (and I’d guess the vast majority of their readers). The first sentence of the last paragraph refers to the unsold portion of the student allotment. One might consider those to be the “leftover student tickets.” But in the next sentence, they mention the possibility of putting the “leftover student tickets” on sale on Tuesdays. If you are correct that this is a reference not to the portion of the student ticket allotment left unsold (and alluded to in the prior sentence), but is instead a reference to a new voucher system that will require students to obtain a voucher before the Tuesday of game week and then allow the University to sell any seats not claimed, then I’d suggest that the article could have stated that more clearly and the reference to “leftover” tickets was misleading.

 

[TAW]

Could the Gophers sell Standing Room Only tickets like the Twins have been doing. When the student section does not fill up it's usually the top rows that are empty, the sro's could fill in those seats. I realize there could be a problem with the concourse being too busy.

As I recall, those concourses are pretty wide, so it could be done if you can get Fire Marshall approval and state that any student not in their seat by 7 minutes into the 1st quarter loses their right to that seat, that game. Heck, it might make people show up by kickoff; I would recommend this to UW, except we don't have the wide concourses.

 

[Iceland12]

You may be right that they are planning to shift to a voucher system, I have no idea. But that isn’t clear from the cited portion of the article, at least not to me (and I’d guess the vast majority of their readers). The first sentence of the last paragraph refers to the unsold portion of the student allotment. One might consider those to be the “leftover student tickets.” But in the next sentence, they mention the possibility of putting the “leftover student tickets” on sale on Tuesdays. If you are correct that this is a reference not to the portion of the student ticket allotment left unsold (and alluded to in the prior sentence), but is instead a reference to a new voucher system that will require students to obtain a voucher before the Tuesday of game week and then allow the University to sell any seats not claimed, then I’d suggest that the article could have stated that more clearly and the reference to “leftover” tickets was misleading.

It clearly references both:

"The school also is considering ways to temper what LaFrenz calls "a noticeable no-show factor" in the student section late last season, including putting leftover student tickets on sale to the public on Tuesdays before games."

They are looking at ways to address the no-show factor on of which is deals with leftover tickets. Maybe it was badly edited but not as obtuse as your interpretation of it would suggest.