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

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gophereric30 said:
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!
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Barking up the wrong tree hombre. I'm in a group of 10 dudes who shelled out $80/pop for our seats.
 

dex8425 said:
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.
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Bought 5 of the $13 tickets, total came to $112 or about $22 per ticket. Have not been to US Bank stadium so figured it would be a good chance to get in there with the kids and see an event. Plus the $13 seats are club level and I know for a fact that we won't be sitting club level at a Vikings game at any point in the foreseeable future.

Not surprised they are struggling to sell tickets though because the prices for the better seats are really high and the 9:00 start time sucks.
 

As an adult who loves to drink and has zero responsibilities, the 9 PM start is awesome. But I fully recognize it's impractical for those with young ones.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
As an adult who loves to drink and has zero responsibilities, the 9 PM start is awesome. But I fully recognize it's impractical for those with young ones.
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I assume it's difficult for the 60+ crowd as well that makes up 50% of the Barn attendance each game.
 



Zeppelin Gopher said:
Barking up the wrong tree hombre. I'm in a group of 10 dudes who shelled out $80/pop for our seats.
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Good for you in supporting the gophers! I'm sure I am barking up the wrong tree with some people. I never said nobody was going. It said tickets are lacking. You obviously aren't the reason. Not sure your point. I was saying seems everybody making excuses not to go. If you wanted to let everybody know your going with 9 other dudes mission accomplished! Enjoy and bring home a winner.
 

dpodoll68 said:
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.
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Exactly.
 

The only thing troubling about Friday's ticket sales is the idea that an Minnesota v OkSt game would be attractive to more than 15,000 people with the Sandcrawler as its venue.
 



Will Paul Bunyan's Axe be there?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

gray4heisman said:
I assume it's difficult for the 60+ crowd as well that makes up 50% of the Barn attendance each game.
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Thanks, speeding towards 80 and i am going ! 9 pm is when i just start a night out. What is embarrassing is only 15,000 are going !
 

builtbadgers said:
Thanks, speeding towards 80 and i am going ! 9 pm is when i just start a night out. What is embarrassing is only 15,000 are going !
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Embarrassing for who? Williams only holds 14,500 so a crowd of 15K would be the equivalent of a packed house. Matchup, gametime, cost are all working against this one being a big draw for the general public.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Embarrassing for who? Williams only holds 14,500 so a crowd of 15K would be the equivalent of a packed house. Matchup, gametime, cost are all working against this one being a big draw for the general public.
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Funny and so true. If 15,000 attend the game at US Bank that is more than could see it at Williams Arena. I think the kohl center in Madison (since the original comment came from buildbadger) is around 17,000. So the crowd isn’t that bad.
 



Ewert86PC said:
Will Paul Bunyan's Axe be there?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
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Yea, the band will bring it they can just put it in a Tuba case. I heard they were in charge of where it goes. Might be a conflict, the Cafeteria staff wants it for their Xmas party.
 

My brother and I just bought tickets. Fighting back against the lack.
 

gray4heisman said:
I assume it's difficult for the 60+ crowd as well that makes up 50% of the Barn attendance each game.
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LOL! Doubt that this is the group that doesnt attend. Sir M is 70+ and friends we're meeting are on that category (I'm the youngster)
Some of it is the full hour between games. Go early for some D2 and then what?
And what will the food options be? Sometimes its severely limited for this type of event.
Why not advertise a food and drink package deal to fill that hour?
As a self-employed person, the business philosophy of this seems to be if you hold it they will come - not how to make it enticing and fun. The u repeatedly fails at Marketing 101.
 

gophereric30 said:
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.
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You can literally do that right now on Ticketmaster. Many of the best seats in the house are still available at face value, which is really expensive. The U wasn't putting this event on, but you as a season ticket holder can STILL buy great face value seats, if you want.
 
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MNVCGUY said:
Embarrassing for who? Williams only holds 14,500 so a crowd of 15K would be the equivalent of a packed house. Matchup, gametime, cost are all working against this one being a big draw for the general public.
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Embarrassing for the basketball community in a state with one D1 program in a large metro area. 22 of us are going. Tons of programs would sell far more seats than they can fit into their home arena. It is a chance for all those fans that do not have seats at Williams but of course that is not even sold out.
 

tjgopher said:
You can literally do that right now on Ticketmaster. Many of the best seats in the house are still available at face value, which is really expensive. The U wasn't putting this event on, but you as a season ticket holder can STILL buy great face value seats, if you want.
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Exactly! That's what I've been saying. Let's just forget about the whole should be on the season ticket plan thing and let's just go support the team.
 

gophereric30 said:
Exactly! That's what I've been saying. Let's just forget about the whole should be on the season ticket plan thing and let's just go support the team.
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Agree. This is a great chance for large groups to go together for the first time and for those that want to be in the stadium for a event for the fist time. I would have thought 30,000 people would go.
 

builtbadgers said:
Agree. This is a great chance for large groups to go together for the first time and for those that want to be in the stadium for a event for the fist time. I would have thought 30,000 people would go.
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Can you buy tickets at the gate or do you have to order them in advance through Ticketmaster????

Thanks.
 

cheeseheadgophfan said:
Can you buy tickets at the gate or do you have to order them in advance through Ticketmaster????

Thanks.
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Great question, will try and find out. What does it say about how the event has been handled that we do not even know this !
 


If they actually cared about the local Minnesota Gopher fans, they would have scheduled tonight's first game with of the contests scheduled for tomorrow.
They wouldnt assume that the month before Christmas is a time we have extra cash to throw around
And the 'tailgate' party is an extra $35/person (plus I imagine some TM fees). Website says 'access to food and drink specials', so I would assume this is at a fee not complimentary. This starts at 4:30. and the game we want isn't til 9:00? Not attending the 'party' I wonder if I'll be able to buy anything for dinner? Beer?

This is just a dry run of the Final Four and everyone knows it, so lets not pretend this was designed with the U of M team and fans in mind.
That said, I'm going. But not without some distaste for the way this has been done.
 


Four season tickets have been in my family for many, many years. Sure, we weren't happy about the price of this game (and fees), it seems like it could've been handled better, and not having a D1 game beforehand is a downer, but we saw this as a one-time chance to get a large group. 18 of us are going tonight. That is the reason I'm excited.
 

My wife and I have season tickets. We are going tonight because we go to every Gopher event we can. Tonight was a conflict with volleyball but they have an easier game and our tickets our still being used. Very excited to this game and the 9pm start time is perfect as we can get drinks around 6, dinner at 7 and still make tipoff!
 

builtbadgers said:
Embarrassing for the basketball community in a state with one D1 program in a large metro area. 22 of us are going. Tons of programs would sell far more seats than they can fit into their home arena. It is a chance for all those fans that do not have seats at Williams but of course that is not even sold out.
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I've seen all kinds of empty seats at arenas around college basketball.
 

Moonlight said:
If they actually cared about the local Minnesota Gopher fans, they would have scheduled tonight's first game with of the contests scheduled for tomorrow.
They wouldnt assume that the month before Christmas is a time we have extra cash to throw around
And the 'tailgate' party is an extra $35/person (plus I imagine some TM fees). Website says 'access to food and drink specials', so I would assume this is at a fee not complimentary. This starts at 4:30. and the game we want isn't til 9:00? Not attending the 'party' I wonder if I'll be able to buy anything for dinner? Beer?

This is just a dry run of the Final Four and everyone knows it, so lets not pretend this was designed with the U of M team and fans in mind.
That said, I'm going. But not without some distaste for the way this has been done.
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Are you operating under the assumption that this is some sort of a charity? They're running a business. They're going to structure the event and set prices at the point where they feel they can maximize profit.

Of course they didn't design it with the U of M team and fans in mind. And of course they don't care about the local Minnesota fans, at least those who aren't paying customers. It's naive to think otherwise.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Are you operating under the assumption that this is some sort of a charity? They're running a business. They're going to structure the event and set prices at the point where they feel they can maximize profit.

Of course they didn't design it with the U of M team and fans in mind. And of course they don't care about the local Minnesota fans, at least those who aren't paying customers. It's naive to think otherwise.
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Usually, any business wants to satisfy it customer base. The U is always reminding us of how grateful they are for our patronage. The public has no idea what the management is defining as success, but having a substantial portion of the customer base say no to the event would not be considered success. If they think 15,000 people (many on discounted tickets and others pissed they didn't have access to the discount when they purchased) in an arena platted to seat 30,000 is a success, fine. But they have also irritated a lot of us. You don't want your customer base po'd in any business.

From a fan experience, this has been a disaster so far. They might rescue it by what happens in the arena tonight, but not yet. I hope those who go have a great time and come back telling us this should be done every year and it's worth every penny. I'm not anticipating it, though.

I'm with Iowa. There are piles of empty seats in college venues all over the country not just here. I've been to several of them. The image of customers paying huge bucks flocking to college sports is in someone's imagination, not reality.
 

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