Well this is new... A solution to poor student attendance?

[GopherGod]

Right idea, but I'd do the opposite. Don't give the students thier ticket for the SDSU game in August and expect them to show up in November. They won't. Make them come each week and pick up that's week ticket from the ticket office. It takes two minutes. If you don't pick up your tickets by Thursday, they'll be given to someone else. If you fail to pick-up 3 in a season, you're ineligible to renew for the next year.

Sounds good in theory but who is going to manage this and pay for the extra resources needed to manage this? The ticket office has a hard enough time answering basic questions and dealing with getting tickets out once a year, now you want them to do this prior to each game.

 

[SonOfTheVarsity]

This will hardly help the lack of attendance problem in the student section. I could see maybe 100 of these extra tickets being sold. That's it.

I'd agree with this. I don't think the "my wife wants a student ticket" crowd is going to be big enough to really put any sort of dent in the extra ticket stock. And I don't think too many kids are going to buy the $275 package with the intent to sell them. But I do like the single game guest passes. A lot of times people have a friend/relative/whoever visiting over some weekend and want to go to the game, and this will make that a lot easier (don't need a UCard, etc.)

But, the bigger issue: I think that 10,000 student tickets is just too much. I honestly doubt there are close to that many students who care enough to get season tickets, especially now that the new stadium angle is gone. To me, the solution isn't to find a way to get students to buy more tickets, it's moving the tickets to where there is more demand. They should take, at least, sections 220-222 and 228-230, currently student sections, and make them available to the general public.

 

[Hates Monikers]

I got this email this morning which I thought I would share and ask your opinion on. This is one way to try to combat poor student attendance... I guess. Does it mean that the ticket office is thinking that it might not even sell all of the 10,000 allotted student season tickets?


Student Season Guest Passes Available

Enjoy the Gopher Football Season with all of your friends! New this season, student season ticket holders will be able to purchase a guest pass in addition to their season ticket. Guest passes can be used by anyone, and offer general admission seating in the student section.

Each student season ticket holder would be able to purchase one (1) guest pass
Guest Passes will be able to be used by anyone, not just students
Price for a Guest Pass will be $275.00 (season ticket) and is to be used in the Student Section
Guest Passes will go on sale Thursday, July 22nd at 9:00am and can be purchased over the phone or in person only. Must be a 2010 Football Student Season Ticket Holder to purchase a guest pass.
If available, single game guest passes will go on sale the Tuesday prior the home game.
To purchase your student season guest pass, call 612-624-8080 or visit us at Mariucci Arena.

I realize this thread has meandered off the original topic. And I agree that something has to be done about the student section. But I think I'm missing something. If the information above is correct, these "guest passes" are at best a loophole around season tickets; these will essentially allow new season ticket holders to sit lower than the top row of the stadium. My guess is that the intended benficiaries are alumni who just graduated and still have friends who are students ... they can go to the games and sit together. They're paying the FULL price of a regular season ticket, just as they would have to if they bought them the regular way.

Do people really think students are going to buy these with the idea of selling them to visiting fans for the one game each season where they might be able to sell it for a profit? Are students really going to gamble that an Iowa fan is going to pay $275 for that ticket? How much do they expect to sell the other tickets? My friend lost his ticket before the MSU game last year and we bought another one for $5 ten minutes before the game. If someone thinks they're going to buy this "guest pass" as a surefire way to make money, they're too stupid to be in college.

 

[EG#9]

I don't think there is a solution to poor student attendance beyond the obvious of winning games. Regular season ticket holders may go to games after the Gophers have been eliminated from contention in the Big Ten, but student tickets are cheap enough that students probably don't feel like they are wasting money by not going. Raise student ticket prices? I don't think that works as the demand for tickets would only decrease unless the team was expected to win a significant amount of games.

I think a lot of the different ideas in this thread are interesting and well thought out, but they are essentially trying to build some sort of incentive for students to be someplace they've decided they don't want to be. Most of us have probably been to or are in college. If a student decides they don't want to be in class, they simply don't go. Even the threat of a failing grade or the carrot of "participation points" is not enough to get kids in the door.

The solution is to put a team on the field that wins games. Winning games equals a much better atmosphere and a place where students will want to be. There will always be attendance problems when the team is not only failing to compete for the title in the current year, but has not competed for a title in 3-4 years prior to that year. I would bet that Gopher attendance is at (or above) Big Ten average if you used a formula like (Attendance for Big Ten Games/no. of Big Ten Wins)/stadium capacity.

A lot of us here are loyal to what has been a crappy product for most of (or all of) our lives. We know the product has been crappy, but we think/hope it will be good eventually. Other people either have tried the product and realized its crappy or have heard the product is crappy and don't bother to try it. Unless/until the product changes, the only customers will be the loyal ones and those who will give it a try despite its reputation.

 

[loki]

BINGO!!!!!!!

 

[RodentRampage]

I don't think there is a solution to poor student attendance beyond the obvious of winning games. Regular season ticket holders may go to games after the Gophers have been eliminated from contention in the Big Ten, but student tickets are cheap enough that students probably don't feel like they are wasting money by not going. Raise student ticket prices? I don't think that works as the demand for tickets would only decrease unless the team was expected to win a significant amount of games.

That's possible, but it would reduce the problem of disinterested students buying tickets that they do not use. The students who bought them would be the ones who are more motivated to go. And if tickets were more expensive, students would feel they wasted money by not going or not getting someone to use their tickets. If they are cheap, then the wasted money seems insignificant. I'm not advocating for more expensive tickets, but I'm open to all ideas.

I think a lot of the different ideas in this thread are interesting and well thought out, but they are essentially trying to build some sort of incentive for students to be someplace they've decided they don't want to be. Most of us have probably been to or are in college.

Incentives can work. It's not that they have decided they didn't want to be there, if they didn't want to be there, they wouldn't have purchased tickets in the first place. They aren't sufficiently motivated to attend. One problem is that for many, it's not worth their time to find somene who wants their tickets. A combination of incentives for attending and incentives for passing on your tickets can work. If incentives didn't work, there would never be free pizza.

The solution is to put a team on the field that wins games.

That's *A* solution, but it's can't be the only solution. You're not going to have a great team every year. Other solutions need to be involved.

 

[forestlaker]

Then, if the student section can't be filled with 10,000 students or Alumni, give the tickets away to High School Bands, Cheerleaders and Football Teams. Keep the opponent fans out.

 

[loki]

"You're not going to have a great team every year."


How about just one great team in my lifetime

 

[mplsbadger]

One other way you can do it, which is in a way related to the aforementioned method, is to make students get their tickets prior to EACH game. Set a deadline by, say, Thursday before the next home game, for each student to get their ticket, and then those tickets that were not obtained by students can be sold to the public for a set price. I understand the madness that could ensue in making 8-10k students grab their tickets before each game, but I really think that it COULD work.

When I was at USC in the '80's you purchased a general admission student ticket. You then turned it in during the week with your friends in an envelope and through a random draw you were assigned reserved seats in the student section. They did this for different reasons, the student section stretched to the 35 yard line so it was the best way to equitably distribute the seats.

It proves that your idea could in fact work (although I suppose we'd dispense with the envelopes!)

Note: At USC, you could still get into the game and sit in the end zone general admission area with your GA stub on gameday if you forgot to turn it in. In your scenario, these seats would be sold to the public. Using the same approach as above, the students could be kept in a contiguous area.

 

[Gopherdrummer]

The problem last year among students last year was selling tickets if they could not go. Some people were dumb enough to put them on Craigslist for $100. And no one bought them. I wonder why? $15 ticket for $100 makes sense to me. No, not at all.

Solution to all the reselling problems: Gopher Student StubHub:

1. Gives all students a central place online to purchase unwanted student tickets.
2. Login using MN ID number
3. Post your ticket number on the site if you are selling, once the number is entered your ticket is killed and can't be used
4. Pricing is based on A.) supply and demand, B.) slight premium to give the seller profit, or C.) bidding system
5. Sellers are guaranteed at least face value for their ticket and can be paid using pay pal.
6. Any buyers can pick up their new ticket at Mariucci, or the TCF box office
7. Any unsold tickets 30 minutes prior to kickoff can be purchased as single game standing tickets
8. Tickets must be scanned upon entry

Oh and the U needs to better forecast demand for the student section. 10,000 is too big for now. Sell some as season tickets, once demand gets too high you increase the price until it becomes obvious to expand the stadium years from now.

 

[Regdab]

I think the effort to do something is probably a good idea overall by the admin. The problem though is that it can get out of hand if the football team doesn't create a market for other UofM students to buy up the extra tickets.

You'd be surprised with the number of of students who are willing to buy up extra packages like this even though it will cost them $275.
Now it's obvious that the students aren't going to try to give the entire package away to away fans for $300 or something like that. They're going to do what a lot of other students do at other universities. What they're going to do is bust up the package and sell them individually to different people. This way, you can sell the USC ticket for $100, the Ohio State for $100, the Iowa ticket for $130 and easily make your money back and then some.

Here's the bad news: See, at other universities, there is usually a big enough market within the home team's fan base to re-circulate the tickets back into the fan base. The market for buying up those extra tickets doesn't seem to be alive within the Minnesota Students themselves like it is with other universities. If there aren't enough students to buy up the cheap season tickets, there still isn't going to be anyone to buy them when the game week comes around either. Now, what do you think a student who invested in the process is going to do? Throw away the ticket because there are no Minnesota fans who want to buy them? No way! The reality is that away students will be willing to pay the price to get the ticket and the bottom line is that as much as you'd like to think fan pride will overrule this to prevent the dreaded invasions, money comes first and if the money isn't flowing on the gopher side, there is going to be a huge demand from the outside to quickly and easily seal the deal.

I would suggest for this to work healthy, Minnesota needs to create a market within the Minnesota student body. How do you do this? Put an attractive product on the field. I"m not sure that perpetual 7-6 football teams will do the trick.

 

[gopherphan]

Gopherphan were you even watching the games last year? What games weren't the Gophers in? Cal, Wisconsin and Illinois went down to the last 5 minutes and we beat Purdue and SDSU.

I say you sell the student tickets at a nice price, say $10 bucks a game. BUT, you require at least 86% attendance (6 out of 7 games) and only the student with the ID can use the ticket. If a student cannot attend a game that student is required at least a week in advance to notify the ticket office of their absence so the ticket can go on sale to either students or general season ticket holders. Doing this does not affect their 86% standing. If a student falls below the 86% threshold they lose their ticket privileges and will be refunded $ for the remaining games they lost their privilege to use. Plain and simple. Charging the kids only $70 bucks doesn't make this a $$ issue.

I was there, hell as part of the student group i was front row (not behind the band) for most all of the season. Im not saying that we cant have close games or compete, any team can compete on any given day (and note that decker was in all of those iirc), just that the gophers arent consistent and there's no reason, unless theres some promising camps, to have any excitement about a big shot to win the big games. Im not saying i dont want the gophers to win, ill be back there 3-4 hours early every game to get to the front row because i love em, i just think that the general vibe wont be bringing in many new students based on hype(and not success) alone.

 

[gophergrad]

I understand everyone's upset that it's been so difficult to sell out the student section but it's helping me out.

As a recent grad, my friends and I have little extra money, I've got a single season ticket and usually sit with my little brother in the student section. I wasn't able to get any extra season tickets, and was bummed about not getting my buddies in this season.

Then this comes along, and now instead of finding 4 friends still in school to buy us 4 student tickets and then making sure everyone still has a U card to get in, I can get 8 tickets. The 275 cost is steep compared to the 80 some for a regular student but if you split it, it becomes much more reasonable. Now I've got more people to be rowdy with and there will be fewer empty seats and sqwak-eye fans.

It's not perfect, but for me in this particular situation it worked out.