Stadium Expansion...

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Plato said:
You do not make such a major decision based on two games this season.
The prior AD made a disastrous decision severely raising ticket prices based on one good season. We all know how that turned out.
I believe WI increased capacity after two or three Rose Bowl appearances. That was prudent for there was a waiting list for season tickets according to what I read.
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So we could achieve the same level of desire and fan base size in Minnesota if the team produces similar results to what Wisconsin did.
 

I dont think adding thousands of seats is a good idea. If we start selling out the majority of our home games for the next ten years and people have to be put on a waiting list for season tickets then i will support it. Better to have a full stadium then risk having a half empty one.
 

Problem for the Gophers is the competition from the pros, with sports seasons now overlapping one another so that Twins, Timberwolves, Vikings, the Wild all playing during what used to be college football season, plus even the basketball Gophers, who used to start in December. Even with a winning team it will be some time before the Gophers draw 55k regularly.
 

Great Plains Gopher said:
Problem for the Gophers is the competition from the pros, with sports seasons now overlapping one another so that Twins, Timberwolves, Vikings, the Wild all playing during what used to be college football season, plus even the basketball Gophers, who used to start in December. Even with a winning team it will be some time before the Gophers draw 55k regularly.
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B.S. We sold out to start the season for TCU a few years back and just showed we can sell out cold snowy games to close the season. With a little continued success they can and will sell out consistently,
I don't know if that will translate to a big jump in season tickets because the sell outs are so late that not many have really had any trouble getting last minute tickets, maybe if we start selling out games for a whole or most of a season that will turn around. Personally I'd just be happy if by the next time Wisconsin comes here there is a little less Red in the stadium.
 

i wish they would improve the upper deck concourse into something more usable with better concessions and restrooms so it would alleviate everyone going to the only one. Plenty of room to add facilities up top and they can connect them to the existing elevator bank structures that already exist
 


Maroon1992 said:
i wish they would improve the upper deck concourse into something more usable with better concessions and restrooms so it would alleviate everyone going to the only one. Plenty of room to add facilities up top and they can connect them to the existing elevator bank structures that already exist
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I remember going to games at Metropolitan Stadium and they had vendors walking the aisles with hot dogs. I think that would reduce the lines at concessions if some common purchases were available in the seats. You get the cotton candy vendors, but you don't often see vendors come by with sodas and I don't think I've ever seen a hot dog vendor in the aisles.
 

Schnauzer said:
I had by far my worst experience since the stadium opened at the Wisconsin game, at Gate D. I spent over an HOUR in the security line and missed Wisconsin's entire first possession. It was maddening. I get it that this wasn't the case at every gate, but it was infuriating to have such a wildly different experience compared to the Penn State game, where I arrived at the exact same time/place and was in my seat in time for the entire band pregame show.

If you had been anywhere near gate D, you would be slapping yourself in your own face right now for saying "I think entry has gotten better."
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I too was stuck in the line at Gate D. Crowd was getting very restless. Email the ticket office and tell them about it. I did right after the game, and they responded and were very interested in this.
 

GopherRock said:
I too was stuck in the line at Gate D. Crowd was getting very restless. Email the ticket office and tell them about it. I did right after the game, and they responded and were very interested in this.
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I included a long description of my frustration in the free-form comments from the post game survey I had received via email the next day.

I have been entering the same gate dating all the way back to the first season in 2009 and through that time I have learned exactly when to leave from tailgate to get to my seat in time for band, team entrance, kickoff, etc. and make these decisions properly considering variables such as expected crowd size, weather, and clothing. through all this time, I have only unexpectedly missed two kickoffs: Both involved staff not knowing how to run security through the stand up metal detectors. I gave them the benefit of the doubt the first time it happened a few years ago, but there is no excuse to have this happen like it did for the Wisconsin game.
 

LakerFan said:
B.S. We sold out to start the season for TCU a few years back and just showed we can sell out cold snowy games to close the season. With a little continued success they can and will sell out consistently,
I don't know if that will translate to a big jump in season tickets because the sell outs are so late that not many have really had any trouble getting last minute tickets, maybe if we start selling out games for a whole or most of a season that will turn around. Personally I'd just be happy if by the next time Wisconsin comes here there is a little less Red in the stadium.
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I think competition is relevant as far as general average attendance taking a hit.

But also yeah if the Gophers play well competition from the pros suddenly becomes less an issue.
 



LakerFan said:
B.S. We sold out to start the season for TCU a few years back and just showed we can sell out cold snowy games to close the season. With a little continued success they can and will sell out consistently,
I don't know if that will translate to a big jump in season tickets because the sell outs are so late that not many have really had any trouble getting last minute tickets, maybe if we start selling out games for a whole or most of a season that will turn around. Personally I'd just be happy if by the next time Wisconsin comes here there is a little less Red in the stadium.
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Even if we sell out, there will always be red in the stadium. Season Ticket owners will always sell their Wisconsin Game tickets and this will increase if demand increases and shrinks supply.

I know several people who subsidize their Vikings Season Tickets by selling Packer game tix to Cheeseheads.
 

We need to sell out just about everygame for it to make sense to make the stadium bigger. Yes fans showed up for TCU, Penn State, Wisconsin because they were big games. What happens when we have a 70,000 seat stadium and only 30,000 show up when we play illinois, rutgers, indiana and other bottom feeders. When we have a 6 and 6 season the place will look completley empty. I think talk about expanding right now is crazy when our first sellout in like 5 years was this year.
 

The trend across sports is increase club/luxury areas and reduce overall capacity. Iowa just rebuilt the North end zone with increased club seating but lost 1k in capacity.

I could see TCF Bank add a big club area that raises capacity 2k-3k.
 

Schnauzer said:
I included a long description of my frustration in the free-form comments from the post game survey I had received via email the next day.

I have been entering the same gate dating all the way back to the first season in 2009 and through that time I have learned exactly when to leave from tailgate to get to my seat in time for band, team entrance, kickoff, etc. and make these decisions properly considering variables such as expected crowd size, weather, and clothing. through all this time, I have only unexpectedly missed two kickoffs: Both involved staff not knowing how to run security through the stand up metal detectors. I gave them the benefit of the doubt the first time it happened a few years ago, but there is no excuse to have this happen like it did for the Wisconsin game.
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The Wisc game.

The hot weather game with "sorry we ran out of water we didn't watch the weather forecast" (ok they didn't say that but man).

The random availability of condiments on the home side.

I swear the level of proactive and thoughtful actions by the folks running the day to day operations is kinda wonky.

I do give them credit as they sort of tried to resolve some parking dork ups and make space for "late" (like 2 hours man) arrivals at some parking lots and that's great .... and then they just sort of forget how to do that from game to game...
 



Plato said:
www.tapatalk.com

Buckyville-Camp Randall South Endzone Renovation

"The time has past to look at it as squeezing out the little guy." The "little guy" can get tickets on the street sometimes cheaper that what he would
www.tapatalk.com www.tapatalk.com
Expansion at Camp Randall, image stolen from Buckyville.
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TCF already has that setup in the DQ club premium seats, except the TCF seats are primo midfield instead of in the endzone at Camp Randall.
 

LakerFan said:
B.S. We sold out to start the season for TCU a few years back and just showed we can sell out cold snowy games to close the season. With a little continued success they can and will sell out consistently,
I don't know if that will translate to a big jump in season tickets because the sell outs are so late that not many have really had any trouble getting last minute tickets, maybe if we start selling out games for a whole or most of a season that will turn around. Personally I'd just be happy if by the next time Wisconsin comes here there is a little less Red in the stadium.
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Regularly is the key word. If it takes top 15 matchups to sell out the stadium, that's not something you can count on, and definitely isn't enough for expansion.

The biggest thing the Gophers need is to keep building on success and building the gameday atmosphere. That doesn't happen by just making the stadium giant and letting anyone who wants get a ticket. It means that it should be special to get to go to a game and share it with 50,000 other people who really want to be there. Plus, who knows if this success will be continued for decades to come. The last thing we need is to add 30,000 seats and then 10 years from now only have 25,000 people show up like was happening last year.

People shouldn't have the mindset that a sellout means the stadium is too small. An expectation to be able to go up a week before a top 10 rivalry game and get a ticket isn't realistic (at least at a reasonable price) for any blue blood program and the Gophers should strive to have enough fan interest and demand that it isn't realistic here either.
 

I like the idea of adding some temporary seating. If the demand keeps growing for the long term, we could see about expansion.
 

dumbgoph said:
Regularly is the key word. If it takes top 15 matchups to sell out the stadium, that's not something you can count on, and definitely isn't enough for expansion.

The biggest thing the Gophers need is to keep building on success and building the gameday atmosphere. That doesn't happen by just making the stadium giant and letting anyone who wants get a ticket. It means that it should be special to get to go to a game and share it with 50,000 other people who really want to be there. Plus, who knows if this success will be continued for decades to come. The last thing we need is to add 30,000 seats and then 10 years from now only have 25,000 people show up like was happening last year.

People shouldn't have the mindset that a sellout means the stadium is too small. An expectation to be able to go up a week before a top 10 rivalry game and get a ticket isn't realistic (at least at a reasonable price) for any blue blood program and the Gophers should strive to have enough fan interest and demand that it isn't realistic here either.
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I was just refuting the idea that other sports teams in town will prevent us from selling out games, because it hasn't and it won't. I don't think we need to expand, I would think you would start selling out regularly first, let that trickle up to higher season ticket sales, then when season ticket sales are going where you want them start raising prices to capitalize on demand, then and only then when you are maximizing revenue out of this stadium as is look at building more seats. That's years down the road minimum.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I swear the level of proactive and thoughtful actions by the folks running the day to day operations is kinda wonky.

I do give them credit as they sort of tried to resolve some parking dork ups and make space for "late" (like 2 hours man) arrivals at some parking lots and that's great .... and then they just sort of forget how to do that from game to game...
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They contract all the stuff out, security, food&bev ops, sanitary, etc. probably minimum bids. As long as there's a warm body assigned to this stand or this station or whatever, that's good enough for them.
 

MplsGopher said:
They contract all the stuff out, security, food&bev ops, sanitary, etc. probably minimum bids. As long as there's a warm body assigned to this stand or this station or whatever, that's good enough for them.
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Yeah I've assumed that to be the case.

I contacted the Athletic Department about things from time to time and I've gotten polite responses back and I suspect the department (or someone there) actually knows ... but everything is contracted out so much that I'm not sure they have any real control over quality and what really happens day to day.

Reminds me when a company I worked for started outsourcing support operations. The company they contracted with was terrible... but hey someone signed a contract and told their boss this would save money (it did not) and everyone knows nobody is going to fight to get out of the contract, and outsourcing is the industry standard ... so there you go the outsourcing company can do whatever and they know nothing will happen.
 

Their only "control" is if the contract gets renewed or not. I think the vendor would have to be doing just a terrible job, across the board, massive complaints, violations, etc. to lose the contract.

They're not going to want to pay 150% of the minimum bid to someone else, just to appease a few fan complaints of slow/bad service, frankly ... just life.
 

tikited said:
Both are the worst.
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I will say I agree with you but....If it came to be that we are able to better brand ourselves, a game at the dead bird crib at the end of the year could be beneficial. If it can be Wisconsin, Iowa or Nebraska, that would be a well attended game. So many things would have to make it possible on the back end though and the University is notorious for getting screwed when it comes to business deals. Work needs to be done to bring the BIG championship here every couple years maybe a rotation with Indy, Detroit.
 

gopherjay said:
I will say I agree with you but....If it came to be that we are able to better brand ourselves, a game at the dead bird crib at the end of the year could be beneficial. If it can be Wisconsin, Iowa or Nebraska, that would be a well attended game. So many things would have to make it possible on the back end though and the University is notorious for getting screwed when it comes to business deals. Work needs to be done to bring the BIG championship here every couple years maybe a rotation with Indy, Detroit.
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It's all a matter of what you view as important, but as someone noted, a game at USB against any of those three type of teams, you're likely to get 50% of the crowd being the opponent. That's not a good or fair atmosphere for our guys. At TCF we have more control of that, in a sense, and can (hopefully) ensure that it's a mostly hometeam, partisan crowd.
 

RodentRampage said:
I like the idea of adding some temporary seating. If the demand keeps growing for the long term, we could see about expansion.
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I only attended a couple games during the Vikes run at TCF and I don't remember how the temporary seating impacted the plaza in the open end. Was there enough room behind those bleachers to still have the food/beverage vendors that we have now?
 

Slightly under 51,000 seats are fine for our needs. There is no need to expand. We can point to a very small number of games since 2010 that have been true sellouts. The big Penn State and Wisconsin crowds were remarkable, but we don’t know when a season like this will come around again given our history. Plus the fair weather fans that turned up for those key matchups aren’t likely to do so for non conference games against MAC teams and visits from Northwestern, Purdue, and Rutgers. It’s best to stand pat on capacity and instead have future stadium improvements focus on bettering the spectator experience, such as replacing the video boards, and improving team facilities to ensure they remain first class.
 

Panthadad2 said:
I only attended a couple games during the Vikes run at TCF and I don't remember how the temporary seating impacted the plaza in the open end. Was there enough room behind those bleachers to still have the food/beverage vendors that we have now?
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Yes, the food and beverage vendors were behind the temporary end zone stands and in greater numbers than before and after due to the larger capacity.
 

Panthadad2 said:
I only attended a couple games during the Vikes run at TCF and I don't remember how the temporary seating impacted the plaza in the open end. Was there enough room behind those bleachers to still have the food/beverage vendors that we have now?
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Yeah it wasn't super crowded back there when I went back there... probably partly because there wasn't much reason to BE back there as you couldn't see much other than to get food.
 

Don't put those ugly temporary bleachers in the endzone (like they did for the Vikings). It just ruins the whole look of the stadium and clogs up the plaza area. I sometimes like to take a stroll, get a beer and watch the game from the open end of the endzone. With temp bleachers, that was not possible.
 

Sports_Realist said:
Slightly under 51,000 seats are fine for our needs. There is no need to expand. We can point to a very small number of games since 2010 that have been true sellouts. The big Penn State and Wisconsin crowds were remarkable, but we don’t know when a season like this will come around again given our history. Plus the fair weather fans that turned up for those key matchups aren’t likely to do so for non conference games against MAC teams and visits from Northwestern, Purdue, and Rutgers. It’s best to stand pat on capacity and instead have future stadium improvements focus on bettering the spectator experience, such as replacing the video boards, and improving team facilities to ensure they remain first class.
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I agree. Look at Kansas State as an example. Bill Synder made that program very good a long time ago and they have sustained it. Yet, the stadium capacity is still 50,000. They did rename the stadium in Synder's name. Maybe if our current coach becomes a legend here we'll rename TCF to PJ Fleck Row the Boat Stadium.:D
 
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TCFsuites2.jpg
So after we win 2020, 2021 nat'l championships U of M will add on suites on the sunny side. could be titled the "M health Geriatric Zone"
 

That's what I was thinking as far as a Michigan-esque "duplication" of the box on the other side.

Can you do one with the bowl closed in, just for s's and g's?
 

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