Interesting Tidbit in MN Daily regarding visiting tickets...

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alltimetwinsfan

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I happened to be reading the daily today regarding the stadium sellout, and found this interesting:

Every opponent school receives 3,000 tickets to sell to their fans, Athletics Communication Director Garry Bowman said. If a school fails to use all of their tickets, the remaining tickets will become available to the public. The 3,000 tickets have already been sold for the first two home games against Air Force and California. He said he also expects SDSU fans to use all 3,000 for the Nov. 14 game.
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It's interesting to me that both Cal and Air Force have already sold out their allotment. I guess I'm not completely up on how well these two teams travel, but I'm surprised that they went as quickly as they did. Could this be simply the draw for the new stadium, or are there other factors at work...like scalpers buying up the road allotments?

Just a thought...
 

I am REALLY surprised that Air Force would use up all their tickets. But, I have a friend who is a mom of one of the Air Force players and she told me a couple months ago she was trying to get a billion tickets to the game but the Air Force people were telling her she'd have to settle for a lot fewer tickets than what she wanted.

I don't think of Cal as being a big traveling fan base either... especially a trip that far.

Interesting.
 

Wouldn't the scalpers have to be Cal or Air Force season ticket holders? Or do you think they do it a little differently given the nature of the distance between our schools and the likelihood of a Cal season ticket holder (or 3k of them) being able to make the trip to MN. Maybe they did go the route of offering up tickets to anybody?

I would not be surprised if there are 3,000 Air Force fans in the metro - plenty of Air Force retirees in the area and/or parents with kids at the AFA or Air Force in general.

Also, does the U see the revenue for these tickets or do we give up that option unless we receive any back? Does each athl. dept. assume they will more or less come out even by selling opponents' away tickets?
 

Service academies always travel well, especially in the metropolitan areas where there are a great deal of active and retired military personnel.

As for Cal, it is a program that has done fairly well historically, and has a renewed vigor since Tedford took over the program. I am not at all surprised that they have sold out their allotment this early.

Certainly there are people looking to profit off the opening of our new stadium, but I would wager that the great majority are interested fans of the two programs.
 

alltimetwinsfan said:
I happened to be reading the daily today regarding the stadium sellout, and found this interesting:



It's interesting to me that both Cal and Air Force have already sold out their allotment. I guess I'm not completely up on how well these two teams travel, but I'm surprised that they went as quickly as they did. Could this be simply the draw for the new stadium, or are there other factors at work...like scalpers buying up the road allotments?

Just a thought...
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I'm not surprised that the AF tix sold out. AFA grads live/are stationed all over the place which would seemingly make it easier to sell out road games (think ND national style fanbase, only not as big). Additionally, I can see folks who were/are enlisted in the Air Force adopting the team as their own which would expand the national footprint of fans further. Lastly, I think their core group of fans travels pretty well (at least that's the impression I got from their posting board).
 


Air Force Message Board

I think Air Force has a pretty large midwest fan base. Looking at this thread it looks like tickets sold out long ago to season ticket holders.
 

I guess my surprise leans more on the side of the Cal fans than AFA. I understand their national base, so I'm not particularly surprised there...it's more the Cal tickets already being gone.
 

I was thinking that the visitor tickets would be mostly sold/sold out by every team we play this year and probably next. Considering we are a big ten team, in a big city and have a new state-of-the-art stadium, I can see why many fans that usually don't travel would want to come for their teams first game at TCF.
 

I would think the Cal fans would have a similar interest in traveling to MN as our fans did for traveling to Berkeley. It's a trip that likely won't be made again and is against a major conference.
 



Another factor might be that Cal is a school that draws its student body from all over. After college, alums disperse around the country and I’d guess many of them are a lot closer to Minneapolis than they are to Berkeley.
 

The real scoop on the Air Force tickets

alltimetwinsfan said:
I happened to be reading the daily today regarding the stadium sellout, and found this interesting:



It's interesting to me that both Cal and Air Force have already sold out their allotment. I guess I'm not completely up on how well these two teams travel, but I'm surprised that they went as quickly as they did. Could this be simply the draw for the new stadium, or are there other factors at work...like scalpers buying up the road allotments?

Just a thought...
Click to expand...

As a life long Gopher fan and had a son play for the Air Force Academy, I have been following this situation closely as I was planning on getting tickets through Air Force. Air Force as with all schools I believe sell their season tickets first. They let season ticket holders buy an unlimited amount of tickets to the Minnesota game which pisses me off, because Air Force will have a decent following, but alot of those tickets are on Stubhub or Ticket Express. There were no tickets for the general public to buy from Air Force when they went on sale. I still have connections at the Academy, so I still have hope of getting my 6 tickets, but the process they use sucks.

The Air Force following is decent, but I doubt highly that 3000 Air Force fans will be there. I travelled to several away games and other than Tennessee, Notre Dame, games against the other Academies and bowl games, they haven't had huge followings.
 

Does this mean that Wisconsin has not sold out their tickets and that the U doesn't expect them to?!? Kind of an odd article. Obviously Wisconsin and SDSU will sell out their 3,000.
 

swmngo4 said:
Does this mean that Wisconsin has not sold out their tickets and that the U doesn't expect them to?!? Kind of an odd article. Obviously Wisconsin and SDSU will sell out their 3,000.
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who knows? i do know that the becky ATO was requiring the highest number of becky points possible in order to be able to purchase away game tickets through the ATO for this year's MN/WI game. apparently, to get to the level of points needed to obtain these ATO sourced tickets you have to be a pretty big donor to the becky program. they will likely all be purchased in the end, but who knows in this type of economic environment.
 



swmngo4 said:
Does this mean that Wisconsin has not sold out their tickets and that the U doesn't expect them to?!? Kind of an odd article. Obviously Wisconsin and SDSU will sell out their 3,000.
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It sounds to me like at this point they only know about the non-conference visitor sales (since those are the 3 teams he mentions). That said, there is no way the U expects UW to return their allotment.
 

Bronko Nagurski Gopher said:
who knows? i do know that the becky ATO was requiring the highest number of becky points possible in order to be able to purchase away game tickets through the ATO for this year's MN/WI game. apparently, to get to the level of points needed to obtain these ATO sourced tickets you have to be a pretty big donor to the becky program. they will likely all be purchased in the end, but who knows in this type of economic environment.
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They will be purchased. Period. :) The economy might dent the amount Becky fans will pay on Stub Hub or to scalpers but it won't affect their ability to get rid of 3K seats at face value.
 

GoAUpher said:
They will be purchased. Period. :) The economy might dent the amount Becky fans will pay on Stub Hub or to scalpers but it won't affect their ability to get rid of 3K seats at face value.
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agreed. one thought though. do some of those wisky folks who got them at face value then turn around and sell their tickets on stub hub, etc. to gopher and/or fellow becky fans who are not as well off? i can see this happening. probably not a lot of people, but perhaps some of the 3K allotment their ATO received. again who knows?!
 

Bronko Nagurski Gopher said:
agreed. one thought though. do some of those wisky folks who got them at face value then turn around and sell their tickets on stub hub, etc. to gopher and/or fellow becky fans who are not as well off? i can see this happening. probably not a lot of people, but perhaps some of the 3K allotment their ATO received. again who knows?!
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Wouldn't surprise me.
 

This is BS. Cal hasn't even released most of their tickets yet. I called the ticket office yesterday. They won't start selling away tix to everyone buy Bears donors until July 14th. And even then, those only go on sale to SEASON TICKET HOLDERS.

Check email:

Hi Adam,
Any Cal alumnus can purchase away game tickets, and if you are a
non-donor, non-season ticket holder, you are eligible to purchase up to 10
away game tickets. The tickets will go onsale to you on July 14th, and
they will cost $50 each plus a $4 per ticket fee. You will need to
purchase those by calling (800)GO-BEARS. There is no purchasing deadline,
but if they sell out you will have to buy them from Minnesota instead.
Thank you for your interest in Cal Athletics!

Go Bears!
Jackie
Cal Athletic Ticket Office
 

Has the U started selling tickets to away games yet? I have not seen anything regarding the purchase of tickets to the away games. So I would guess that most schools have not yet started this process.
 

harley_gopher said:
Has the U started selling tickets to away games yet? I have not seen anything regarding the purchase of tickets to the away games. So I would guess that most schools have not yet started this process.
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The U is putting the away games on sale sometime in July.
 

Has the U started selling tickets to away games yet? I have not seen anything regarding the purchase of tickets to the away games. So I would guess that most schools have not yet started this process.
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This was the OTHER reason I was surprised to read this...I assumed they left the Big Ten schools out of this mix because I figured they hadn't begun to sell them, and I thought these other schools were selling them very early. It sounds like the AFA has been doing it, but with Cal confirming that they haven't even started selling them, this sounds more and more like a fact error.

I would be shocked if any of our visiting opponents doesn't sell a majority of their allotment this year, considering it's a new stadium and all...I was just surprised at how early it had happened...appears I was on to something after all.
 

In 2008 tickets for Gopher away games went on sale June 3 (season ticket holders)

In 2009 away game tickets were originally going to be on sale for season ticket holders starting June 1. However, due to the demand from the new stadium, the ticket office wanted to be sure that all season ticket holders were identified before this perk (away game ticket priority) was made available. So now away game tickets will be available for season ticket holders starting July 13
 

alltimetwinsfan said:
This was the OTHER reason I was surprised to read this...I assumed they left the Big Ten schools out of this mix because I figured they hadn't begun to sell them, and I thought these other schools were selling them very early. It sounds like the AFA has been doing it, but with Cal confirming that they haven't even started selling them, this sounds more and more like a fact error.

I would be shocked if any of our visiting opponents doesn't sell a majority of their allotment this year, considering it's a new stadium and all...I was just surprised at how early it had happened...appears I was on to something after all.
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Cal notified the U of M along time ago that they would not be returning any tickets. I believe Cal already has them available for season ticket holders. After they have given season ticket holders time to purchase away game tickets they open them up to non-season ticket holders.
 

Just as a point of clarification. The Badgers season ticket holders get to order away game tickets first. They make a request of how many they want up to 4 and then the ticket office gives them out based on Badger Fund points. As Bronko stated, it was posted that you needed 1050 or so Fund points to get the tickets, so it was a very difficult ticket to get.

The tickets are gone, before they were even made available to the public through the Wisconsin ticket office. There will not be any returned.

I would guess Air Force would have no trouble selling any away game tickets as was previously stated. I think most major programs like Cal have a core fan base that travels all the time and the official University party is probably 1000 alone. Should be no surprise those tickets are gone as well.

Add in the fact that it is a nice fall weekend in a nice city with a new stadium and as a Cal or Air Force fan, it would be a no brainer to travel.

Edit: Damn, I made it through a whole post without a sarcastic put down of the Gophers. What the heck is my problem today?
 

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