Breakin' The Plane
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I bought 5 tickets on Saturday for $67.50 each. I was charged some sort of Order Fee for $10. Feel like I got off lucky.
People are mad at me and I bought tickets to a game I likely can’t attend. Meaning I’ll either give them away or sell them at a loss.
Sorry that I think waiving fees (and advertising that you did) May increase traffic to the site and sell tickets.
Football season ticket prices will be adjusted after the season (like they were for basketball and hockey). One of the main reasons for this is so the ticket office can have more single-game price options.
I think hockey did make a few of the tickets actually cheaper but they also kept net ticket price on most the same (raised donation but lowered base price).How did basketball and hockey change their season tickets? I've only heard about the scholarship seating debacle. I hope we can come up with something favorable.
There are nearly two weeks to go and I do hope I am wrong but it is looking to me like the game of the century will be another non-sellout. This further proves the point that over the years the overused saying "just win and attendance will take care of itself" was false. There is much more to this than simply winning. The place filled for games like Syracuse and even a Thursday night work night game against TCU but not this season.
An overview of the ticket map on Gopher Sports reveals the following observations:
-roughly 90 sections in the stadium (some of the premium sections on the south side are outliers)
-Of the 90 sections about 15 are student sections and were about half full for Maryland with $7 tickets. Will this improve for an 11:00 AM game?
- 9 are mostly full and these are almost all the little sections in the west end zone
- about 40 have plenty of seats available
- about 20 have large swaths of availability, multiple full rows open, etc.
- 2 have most seats in the section available
That is a LOT of open seats and I would assume there was a bump in ticket sales immediately following the win over Maryland. But here we are on the following Tuesday and there are open seats all over the place. Anyone want to stick with the "just win and it will solve the attendance problems" viewpoint? Nosebleed seats on the side, very top row are $120. So that is $480 for a family of four to take in the game even before parking, concessions, etc. There is your problem. I still can't figure out the students. If they can't do better than half full with $7 tickets for this team on a beautiful full sun day, I am not sure what is up with that.
I think part of the deal is this city just isn't a strong Gopher football town.
It won't be until you cultivate it from the ground up.
Young families aren't going to start a tradition of tailgating and bringing Aidan and Emily to the game for $120 a ticket and do that 8 times a year.
I think it's a question for the U is at what point do you get new season ticket holders?
Do you get it from U of M kids graduating and buying season tickets at age 22-25?
Or are you hoping to get young families with two kids when the parents are early 30's?
Or are you expecting to grab a couple as their kids get to late teens when there might be a little more discretionary income at age 40-50?
Whatever it is, you need to make a plan to fit those people.
Also, things are different now. The whole family doesn't sit around the TV set to watch what dad wants to watch on the weekends. Instead everyone scatters to watch their own thing.
Years ago, dad might decide that the family outing for the week was a football game and wives would agree. I think more households these days are independent where the mom is deciding more of the family outings and less of a focus is on sporting events.
It's amazing to see what type of events a mother in law can suggest is a good, fun, activity in the cities these day to spend a Saturday on.
There's a big counter-culture thing going on with millennial where football is a very difficult sport for females to want to attend. Women have more of a say in the buying power of the family household income and football isn't a high priority, nor is having their kids play football.
Football attendance is not just a Minnesota problem, but wives here in Minneapolis from what I have seen are more empowered than the wives in Wisconsin who are more of a traditional "pleaser" role, happy to drink lite beer on weekends and drive their husbands home.
There are nearly two weeks to go and I do hope I am wrong but it is looking to me like the game of the century will be another non-sellout. This further proves the point that over the years the overused saying "just win and attendance will take care of itself" was false. There is much more to this than simply winning.