The Gazette: Unsold bowl tickets cost B1G nearly $4.5 million; MN/WI sold 1/3 of tix

[BleedGopher]

per The Gazette:

The Cornhuskers' athletics department committed to sell 12,678 tickets to the Gator Bowl as part of a Big Ten arrangement. Whether it was the school's third straight Florida bowl trip, its second consecutive bowl match-up with Georgia or a season-ending 38-17 defeat to Iowa, Nebraska fans balked at buying tickets through the school. According to a document submitted to the NCAA and obtained by The Gazette through an open-records request, Nebraska's athletics department sold just 1,748 Gator Bowl tickets at a loss of nearly $800,000.

Nebraska's department sales, however, belied the game's announced attendance of 60,712. Its opponent, Georgia, took 15,000 tickets and sold just 5,703, meaning only 12.2 percent of tickets were sold by the athletics departments. Most were sold through the bowl itself, a ticket broker or a scalper.

Michigan sold 40.7 percent of its ticket allotment to the Tempe-based Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl. Wisconsin and Minnesota sold barely one-third of their tickets to the Capital One and Texas bowls, respectively. Among Big Ten schools only Iowa (78.2 percent at the Outback) and Michigan State (94.5 percent at the Rose) sold more than half of their allotted tickets this year.

http://thegazette.com/subject/sports/unsold-bowl-tickets-costs-b1g-nearly-45-million-20140516

Go Gophers!!

 

[mcgi0024]

Perhaps it's a sign there are too many bowls and people don't want to spend money to go to meaningless games. Expand the playoffs and dump about half the bowls.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[BleedGopher]

Perhaps it's a sign there are too many bowls and people don't want to spend money to go to meaningless games. Expand the playoffs and dump about half the bowls.

If you dump half the bowls, the attendance for regular season games will go down as many teams will not be playing for anything mid-way through the season. Yes, many of the bowl games are meaningless, but they do keep fans engaged for teams qualifying for meaningless bowls. The number of bowls will continue as long as they keep getting corporate sponsorships. The actual butts in seats is less important to the networks than securing sponsorships and ad dollars.

Go Gophers!!

 

[mcgi0024]

Your point regarding corporate sponsorships and\or TV revenue being the primary source of revenue is well taken. Until real money deviates away from the events they'll continue to exist.

As far as attendance dropping without meaningless bowls I'm not convinced. I think the apathy of the major programs can be seen in the stats you note above. The an bases at Nebraska or Michigan could care less about a tight race to get into a crappy bowl. Hasn't Notre Dame turned down invitations to bowls they thought were beneath them? We might care here but we don't have a large traveling fan base.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[fryguy22]

If you dump half the bowls, the attendance for regular season games will go down as many teams will not be playing for anything mid-way through the season. Yes, many of the bowl games are meaningless, but they do keep fans engaged for teams qualifying for meaningless bowls. The number of bowls will continue as long as they keep getting corporate sponsorships. The actual butts in seats is less important to the networks than securing sponsorships and ad dollars.

Go Gophers!!

Not sure I agree with this. When the Gophers are 5-6 or 6-5 at the end of the year, are fans going to that Thanksgiving weekend game because we could make a bowl, or because they just love to come out and watch the team on Saturdays?

 

[Winasota Gopher]

The term "Bowl Eligible" does mean something.

Now I'm open to "Bowl Eligible" meaning you MIGHT make a bowl and then actually create some drama behind it a la Basketball's selection sunday. But as it stands, win a couple games and you get to go to the "Fun Dip Bowl"....

 

[DoubleB]

So I went to houston for my first bowl game ever. I bought my tickets through the UofM and found I could have saved over half the cost of the tickets if I went through a ticket agent or even on the street.

I think if the schools want to get more people to buy through the university they should reward the people who do. Maybe give them extra points for upgrades or season tickets etc.. I asked when renewing my season tickets this year if buying bowl tickets through the school could benefit my upgrade and was told that is did not.... I guess if I go to another bowl I will be buying the tickets from local ticket holders.

 

[FreakyDeke]

Perhaps it's a sign there are too many bowls and people don't want to spend money to go to meaningless games. Expand the playoffs and dump about half the bowls.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think it's more of a sign that people don't want to overpay for tickets. The cheapest way to get tickets should be through the schools, not through the bowl or scalpers. It's a rip off for the schools.

 

[AO54]

"There's too many bowl games" has to be one of the stupidest arguments of all time. No one is pretending that the winning the Texas Bowl is a great accomplishment. For the majority of bowls it just means one extra game against a competitive opponent. TV ratings for the bowls are very good. Great opportunity for teams to play a quality non-conference opponent.

 

[highwayman]

"There's too many bowl games" has to be one of the stupidest arguments of all time. No one is pretending that the winning the Texas Bowl is a great accomplishment. For the majority of bowls it just means one extra game against a competitive opponent. TV ratings for the bowls are very good. Great opportunity for teams to play a quality non-conference opponent.

That's why bowl ticket sales are irrelevant. Completely irrelevant.

We see these threads year after year, and yet the bowl games still exist, the .500 and above teams get to go, and the games are on TV. Bowl ticket sales are irrelevant.

 

[Winasota Gopher]

"There's too many bowl games" has to be one of the stupidest arguments of all time. No one is pretending that the winning the Texas Bowl is a great accomplishment. For the majority of bowls it just means one extra game against a competitive opponent. TV ratings for the bowls are very good. Great opportunity for teams to play a quality non-conference opponent.

Precisely.... If someone says that we should translate to "I wish we played one less game against a decent to good opponent". Doesn't sound so good anymore.

 

[GopherinPhilly]

If bowl games didn't make money they wouldn't exist. The problem is that one way bowl games make money is the required ticket sales by attending teams. We all know you can get the tickets cheaper through a broker, stub hub or outside the gate 5 minutes before kick off. In fact, you can get far better seats for 20-50% discounts for most bowls.

So if the conference isn't going to push back against the bowls so they don't have to eat so much costs, then it is incumbant upon the conferences and schools to make the more expensive tickets more appealing. Or they can keep subsidizing the bowls and reducing real income to the schools.

In my mind, this was as big reason the B1G swapped out several bowl games. The conference probably feels that we have a good chance of selling more tickets to new locals, better vacation destinations, regionally close locals and, NYC (for too many reasons to count).

 

[Iceland12]

Big Ten schools still come out WAY ahead, by over $20 million. The B1G is also taking a big step to improve this process. The league will now have a very big say in which team goes where with their new Bowl tie-ins.

The league keeps the bowl payouts and provides every bowl-bound school with an predetermined stipend. After those allowances and other expenses — such as unsold tickets — are subtracted, the league equally syndicates equal shares of the surplus to all its members and itself. The Big Ten's total payout for its seven bowl teams was nearly $39 million. However their bowl allowances totaled more than $13 million and cost of absorbing unsold tickets for those games combined for nearly $4.5 million.

Read more: http://thegazette.com/subject/sport...-b1g-nearly-45-million-20140516#ixzz33m0YVaDr