discount ticket rant -- you've been warned!

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NateDawgUM

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I was irked earlier today when the Minnesota Athletic Dept once again offered tickets at a steep discount just days before kickoff. I usually don't mind it when they offer deals as I prefer the atmosphere of a full stadium and don't mind a few average Joes saving a few bucks to see us play Western Illinois.

Today was different. The Gophers are 4-0 heading into a Homecoming match-up with an arch rival. Ticket demand is as high as its ever been for a game at TCF Bank Stadium with no ticket available on StubHub for under $100. That is, until the U decided to release 100 tickets for $40 to the general public. Tickets in neighboring sections were available to the general public for $75 last week, and they sold out in less than a day. Why are we suddenly offering a 47% discount when there's sky high demand?

63 tickets in that section are now available on StubHub that weren't available before the "Facebook Deal." The cheapest price is $75. You do the math. Ticket brokers and opportunistic fans snatched up those seats to pocket the spread between the market value and the price that the Athletic Department offered. For one of the poorer schools in the Big Ten, why are we leaving any money on the table? Yet, once the facilities fundraising drive is in full effect, the U will gladly take your $3500 donation.

That's only part of the problem. The second problem is that by undercutting season ticket holders, you're discouraging casual fans from purchasing season tickets. I'm a die hard, I will buy season tickets every year even though I live 400 miles away. Our tickets are cheap, I'll spend more money on flights, hotels and booze this season than I will on tickets. I generally give away the tickets for games I'm unable to attend in person. I consider the whole thing a donation to the Gophers.

However, how do you get casual fans to purchase season tickets? You have to give them a reason. Most fans will purchase season tickets if they feel it's the best way to get into the games in which they're interested. If they're only truly interested in the Big Ten games, but they see that scalping will cost them at the very least $294 (current StubHub market value) or, the same price as season tickets, they might be inclined just to purchase season tickets. People with season tickets are more likely to go to cupcake games because the tickets are in their possession, so why not?

But these fans know that if they wait until the last minute, the U will offer a discount to the good games. I mean, if they're giving a discount for an undefeated team, playing against Iowa on Homecoming, there are always going to be deals.

Furthermore, the University needs to be more creative about these early season cupcake games to create less supply on the secondary market. If there was an option while buying season tickets to purchase (for a discount) and donate tickets to a local school district or youth group to attend these games, I'm sure many people would gladly take the offer. Grow the fan base from a young age, cut down on empty seats and sell more tickets! It's a win, win, win.

Instead the U leaves money on the table, disincentives season tickets and donates profits to ticket brokers. Meanwhile, over at Northwestern, the Wildcats are using dynamic pricing and have a face value of $126 - $195 for their high-demand Ohio State game in two weeks.

And that's all I have to say about that. Twitter fights and message board wars zap my energy.
 


I agree with most of what you wrote. However, I'll be interested to see if the StubHub prices come down tomorrow and Saturday. StubHub typically has stupidly high prices.
 

I sold my three extras today to a Gopher fan for $93.33/ticket. They were listed on craigslist for 30 minutes and I sold to the first caller. Demand is very high.
 

You're upset about 100 tickets being discounted? Who knows what they could have possibly been saving those for.
 


What Nate said. He wrote exactly what I was thinking, but wrote it much better than I could have!
 

Gold Vision said:
You're upset about 100 tickets being discounted? Who knows what they could have possibly saving those for.
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+1. just checking now and noticed him and nadine (gopherlady) bitching on their facebook page as well. bigger fights out there in my opinion. it was 100 measly tickets in the nosebleed corners. nothing to get so worked up about.
 

Good lord...100 tickets available announced via Facebook and that warrants nine paragraphs. We, Gopher fans, are a strange lot.
 

I think it is valid to say "100 tickets" who cares.

The point that gets me mad - if correct - is that the tickets may have been majority scalped. Instantly.

Why hold 100 tickets and not even get them in Gopher fans hands? Especially when sold at a discount? What did it achieve?
 



anticallihan said:
I think it is valid to say "100 tickets" who cares.

The point that gets me mad - if correct - is that the tickets may have been majority scalped. Instantly.

Why hold 100 tickets and not even get them in Gopher fans hands? Especially when sold at a discount? What did it achieve?
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How would they control who gets to buy the tickets?
 

I can't believe people get upset over things like this.
 


Im sick of the bitching and the false information. GopherLady tweeted that the U was selling 100 tickets for $40, half the price of what season ticket holders pay. And then it was retweeted by Glen Mason. This just spreads false information to everyone. Unless I am getting a sweet deal, season ticket holders do not pay $80 per ticket. We pay $40/ ticket. Or $285 for 7 games. But let's not let facts get in the way of an angry tweet. And as stated, these tickets were the very worse left. AND, it was announced only on the U athletics Facebook page. I am not sure why any Iowa fans would follow the Gopher athletic page. And again, it was 100 freaking tickets. Aimed towards Gopher fans. Get over yourselves.
 



HouseOfHagen said:
I sold my three extras today to a Gopher fan for $93.33/ticket. They were listed on craigslist for 30 minutes and I sold to the first caller. Demand is very high.
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How do you know it wasn't someone pretending to be a Gopher fan?
 

This I don't really care about. My major beef with the ticket distribution this week was opening up the student tickets to the general public WAY too early. I know I know, the Gopher ticket office announced ahead of time and the students that wanted to go should've got their tickets when they had the chance, but we're talking about 18-23 year old kids who procrastinate for a living. According to posts I've seen and people I've talked to, there are still a lot of students looking for a ticket that can't get one anymore. Even if they would've waited to open up those tickets today, they still would've been sold. It's too bad there will be more Iowa fans at the game because of it, instead of students who are Gopher fans and would've loved to have gone. If someone can give me a good reason they sold student tickets to the general public so early in the week, I'd love to hear it.
 


Who runs the ticket office? Interns? If you have 100 tickets to sell and a couple days to get it done. Make it known. First to Season Ticket Holders. You have there contact info don't you? Give them first shot. Second, make it known to U of M Sponsors Blue Cross, Target, Verizon, Subway, Holiday, Waste Management, Cub Foods, State Farm, and local Corporations. General Mills, Best Buy, Ecco Lab, Medtronic, Hormel, Anderson Windows, Marvin Windows, Artic Cat, Polaris. It would take about a hour of phone calls. You might find one or more of these Corporations buying 10-20, or 100. Its 100 tickets, don't discount them, sell them. This is Thursday night and we have already hit the panic button. Again, who runs the ticket office.
 

jaymil said:
This I don't really care about. My major beef with the ticket distribution this week was opening up the student tickets to the general public WAY too early. I know I know, the Gopher ticket office announced ahead of time and the students that wanted to go should've got their tickets when they had the chance, but we're talking about 18-23 year old kids who procrastinate for a living. According to posts I've seen and people I've talked to, there are still a lot of students looking for a ticket that can't get one anymore. Even if they would've waited to open up those tickets today, they still would've been sold. It's too bad there will be more Iowa fans at the game because of it, instead of students who are Gopher fans and would've loved to have gone. If someone can give me a good reason they sold student tickets to the general public so early in the week, I'd love to hear it.
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Just a guess maybe so they quit waiting until the last minute, hoping for a discounted ticket? There's still some left for Penn State. Hope it works.
 

For a school that has trouble finding donors for anything, people here sure are cavalier about the U not collecting an easy $3,500 by discounting tickets that don't need to be discounted.
 

There are reasons to have a fire sale like this beyond selling a few tickets quickly.
 



Why do people keep saying "discounted"? The tickets were in section 231 or 232, face value for those seat are $40, right?
 

Okay, I don't really mind how this played out. The ticket office pushed these tickets out through the Gopher facebook page to (presumably) Gopher fans. Granted it doesn't take long for brokers and Iowa fans to find out about a deal like this, but I think they made as reasonable an effort as possible to put Gopher fans in position to get the last 100 tickets. They offered a discount to get our cheap a$$es to actually buy them up.

If they marked up the price to $100 per ticket and put them on the open market, or as some have suggested here, to corporate partners, people would complain that they weren't giving diehard Gopher fans a chance to get their hands on them.

I didn't make it in time because I had a plumber in my house at 3:00 who needed info from me, but I had thought about trying to get a few of these and offer them at face value to friends who like the Gophers but might not go at $75 each. I do that from time to time with these ticket deals and it's how I try to build the fan base.

Anyway, I think this this feels a little like manufactured outrage.
 

I can't get worked up over 100 tickets. But why is it necessary? They finally have a chance to show fans that they might have to start paying full freight ... so get tickets while you can.

Discounts and giveaways to fill empty seats? Sure. Do it when it appears they will sell at full price? Strange.
 

I'm assuming they did this to reward facebook followers and to try and increase followers. It's not uncommon in today's day and age for businesses to give big advantages by simply following their facebook/twitter pages or e-newsletter. Social networking is an extremely powerful tool now days.

I can't speak for their thinking in this instance, but I do know this is very common.

Secondly, the advantage a season ticket holder has is that when the Gophers go to the Rose Bowl in the next few years, you'll have tickets for much cheaper than the general public will get. :D
 

OK...as usual the blinders go on as the rants continue. These were $40 face value tickets sold for $40 a piece exclusively announced on the Gopher Sports Facebook page. And the problem is????????
 

GopherinPhilly said:
OK...as usual the blinders go on as the rants continue. These were $40 face value tickets sold for $40 a piece exclusively announced on the Gopher Sports Facebook page. And the problem is????????
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You're the 3rd person to bring this up, and it's been ignored thus far. It's hard to stop the pitchforks and torches.
 

GopherinPhilly said:
OK...as usual the blinders go on as the rants continue. These were $40 face value tickets sold for $40 a piece exclusively announced on the Gopher Sports Facebook page. And the problem is????????
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But it's so much more fun to be outraged...
 

Per Sid:

• The Gophers ticket office made every effort not to sell tickets to the Iowa game to Hawkeyes fans. If the application had an Iowa address on it, they didn’t get the tickets.
 

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