Future ticket sales for Gophers?

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PJ's comments on expanding the stadium is interesting. I have a strong feeling that increased ticket sales is a failed model for pretty much all college football (all sports really) teams. If I had to guess, I think live sports are in for a major decline in actual ticket sales. I base this on:
1. TV has very good coverage. Every game is on and the quality is very good.
2. Stadiums have a broken business model for concessions. Beer and food will need to come down in price to bar/restaurant prices and come up in quality. Costs now are exorbitant and quality sucks.
3. People are busy and less and less people will take the whole day to go to a game.
4. Information is everywhere. maybe it is just me, but I used to have to watch every minute of teams I follow. I now seem happy to follow on my phone. Moreover, if I do watch on TV, I tend to PVR and watch later. That way I miss the commercials and halftime. Even then I skip through boring games quickly (looking at you pretty much entire 2016 Gophers season).

Thoughts? Am I off base here?
 

I duno man.

Your number 1 sounds like the old baseball owners when they tried to clamp down on TV in an effort to drive attendance... and they found it worked the other way...
 

Winnipegopher said:
PJ's comments on expanding the stadium is interesting. I have a strong feeling that increased ticket sales is a failed model for pretty much all college football (all sports really) teams. If I had to guess, I think live sports are in for a major decline in actual ticket sales. I base this on:
1. TV has very good coverage. Every game is on and the quality is very good.
2. Stadiums have a broken business model for concessions. Beer and food will need to come down in price to bar/restaurant prices and come up in quality. Costs now are exorbitant and quality sucks.
3. People are busy and less and less people will take the whole day to go to a game.
4. Information is everywhere. maybe it is just me, but I used to have to watch every minute of teams I follow. I now seem happy to follow on my phone. Moreover, if I do watch on TV, I tend to PVR and watch later. That way I miss the commercials and halftime. Even then I skip through boring games quickly (looking at you pretty much entire 2016 Gophers season).

Thoughts? Am I off base here?
Click to expand...

I'm all in for virtual attendence.....

How do I create my holligram?

Best part of this is I could "appear" inside the stadium without going through the ticket line....
 

Not me. I don't care who they're playing . I'm to the end , or should I say the bitter end.Cue up
Wisconsin.:cool:
 

Winnipegopher said:
PJ's comments on expanding the stadium is interesting. I have a strong feeling that increased ticket sales is a failed model for pretty much all college football (all sports really) teams. If I had to guess, I think live sports are in for a major decline in actual ticket sales. I base this on:
1. TV has very good coverage. Every game is on and the quality is very good.
2. Stadiums have a broken business model for concessions. Beer and food will need to come down in price to bar/restaurant prices and come up in quality. Costs now are exorbitant and quality sucks.
3. People are busy and less and less people will take the whole day to go to a game.
4. Information is everywhere. maybe it is just me, but I used to have to watch every minute of teams I follow. I now seem happy to follow on my phone. Moreover, if I do watch on TV, I tend to PVR and watch later. That way I miss the commercials and halftime. Even then I skip through boring games quickly (looking at you pretty much entire 2016 Gophers season).

Thoughts? Am I off base here?
Click to expand...

+ the population of Winnipeg.

I agree with all of this and think Fleck's claims of expanding TCF are ridiculous. It simply will not happen. We could go to 3 straight Rose Bowls and our twin cities would still be filled with Gopher haters, insecure Viking fans, and jilted marginal high school athletes. We will never expand the stadium.

I also DVR every game. I basically won't watch a game we trail in, but if through fast-forwarding I see that we retake the lead, I'll go back and watch how it happened. DVR has completely changed my sports watching across the board. I care too much about the team to commit to imprisoning myself within the stadium to watch what 'might happen.' Experiencing the aftermath on the internet is just as satisfying. Sad, I know - but this is the world we live in.
 


I love to go to games but watching at home right here with all my close personal friends in the game day thread isn't that bad!

I'm sure the MBAs that are privy to spending patterns, demographics, tv contracts could give an informed opinion on this but the fact that new NFL stadiums are IIRC generally somewhere in the 60k-ish range speaks volumes that game attendance is falling as a percentage of population. Tv contracts are where it's at. Even with medium size stadiums NFL teams seem to have more trouble putting butts in the seats.
 

Winnipegopher said:
PJ's comments on expanding the stadium is interesting. I have a strong feeling that increased ticket sales is a failed model for pretty much all college football (all sports really) teams. If I had to guess, I think live sports are in for a major decline in actual ticket sales. I base this on:
1. TV has very good coverage. Every game is on and the quality is very good.
2. Stadiums have a broken business model for concessions. Beer and food will need to come down in price to bar/restaurant prices and come up in quality. Costs now are exorbitant and quality sucks.
3. People are busy and less and less people will take the whole day to go to a game.
4. Information is everywhere. maybe it is just me, but I used to have to watch every minute of teams I follow. I now seem happy to follow on my phone. Moreover, if I do watch on TV, I tend to PVR and watch later. That way I miss the commercials and halftime. Even then I skip through boring games quickly (looking at you pretty much entire 2016 Gophers season).

Thoughts? Am I off base here?
Click to expand...

1. Is false not every game is on! Less coverage if u ask me. Fox sport/Midwest sports channel used to have every game on. Every non conference game. Not now.
2. Attendance-- we used to go to multiple games a year as a family used to get a hot dog with a ticket. U could afford to take the family. Not anymore.. I can barely afford myself to go with 50-100 minimum prices is ridiculous with trying to pay for there bigger budgets
3. People were always busy this has not changed.. still take time to watch games on tv
 

gopherhoopsguy said:
1. Is false not every game is on! Less coverage if u ask me. Fox sport/Midwest sports channel used to have every game on. Every non conference game. Not now.
2. Attendance-- we used to go to multiple games a year as a family used to get a hot dog with a ticket. U could afford to take the family. Not anymore.. I can barely afford myself to go with 50-100 minimum prices is ridiculous with trying to pay for there bigger budgets
3. People were always busy this has not changed.. still take time to watch games on tv
Click to expand...

1. Every game is televised.
2. Can't help you on the hot dog prices, but through places like StubHub or from scalpers on gameday, there were plenty of good cheap tickets available for all home games last year.
 

PMWinSTP said:
1. Every game is televised.
2. Can't help you on the hot dog prices, but through places like StubHub or from scalpers on gameday, there were plenty of good cheap tickets available for all home games last year.
Click to expand...

Well, thanks to our sponsor, Casa de Autos.
 



I would be interested in going back in on season tickets if they dropped the price considerably. I don't care if they're the worst seats in the house - just get me inside the building. It's the reason I can do Twins season tickets (did I mention the Twins are undefeated right now?).
 

Pompous Elitist said:
I love to go to games but watching at home right here with all my close personal friends in the game day thread isn't that bad!
Click to expand...

The IN-GAME threads are a thing of beauty. I can only assume those complaining about the Fleck/Claeys arguments have never read one of those.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

I think points 2 & 3 work against each other to help the stadium sports out. Yes I'd like better food and cheaper beer in general, but because I have less free time, I'm less cost conscious when I do commit to an event. This isn't baseball where $2 a hot dog for a family of four is going to add up to hundreds of dollars over 81 games. If I spend an extra $20 on food and beer at 6-7 home games, who cares. I'm already spending more than that in a donation per game that I didn't want. Plus I think the beer is really good (Surly, Nordeast, plus various light beers) and food is decent (some nice options in the plaza).
 

LakerFan said:
I think points 2 & 3 work against each other to help the stadium sports out. Yes I'd like better food and cheaper beer in general, but because I have less free time, I'm less cost conscious when I do commit to an event. This isn't baseball where $2 a hot dog for a family of four is going to add up to hundreds of dollars over 81 games. If I spend an extra $20 on food and beer at 6-7 home games, who cares. I'm already spending more than that in a donation per game that I didn't want. Plus I think the beer is really good (Surly, Nordeast, plus various light beers) and food is decent (some nice options in the plaza).
Click to expand...

Maybe my family is unusual this way, but we drive past 2 other movie theaters to go to the one that has better and cheaper concessions. Not sure if it totally applies to football, but there are people that pay attention to that (quality and cost). I do agree the beers are fine, but at those prices I can just wait. Priority #1 should definitely be getting the ticket prices down though. If I can get in for a reasonable price I will just skip concessions if they're too expensive.
 



Word said:
Maybe my family is unusual this way, but we drive past 2 other movie theaters to go to the one that has better and cheaper concessions. Not sure if it totally applies to football, but there are people that pay attention to that (quality and cost). I do agree the beers are fine, but at those prices I can just wait. Priority #1 should definitely be getting the ticket prices down though. If I can get in for a reasonable price I will just skip concessions if they're too expensive.
Click to expand...

Driving past 2 movie theaters? That's nothing. As a kid my Mom made us buy hamburgers at McDonalds w/o cheese and then put less expensive cheese at home on them. Yeah, we didn't eat a lot of concession food at ball-games.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

I dropped my Season Tickets this year. Why should I pay $70+ for a ticket when I can walk up to ANY game and pay $10-$20? I had a friend in town last year and needed to get him a ticket for the Iowa game...what I considered the best Home game last year. I paid $10 for a ticket with that was better than what I had. The Light Bulb turned on and I'll take my chances this year. There are so many open seats, my group can buy seperate tickets and still sit together...no problem.
 

DougMN said:
I dropped my Season Tickets this year. Why should I pay $70+ for a ticket when I can walk up to ANY game and pay $10-$20? I had a friend in town last year and needed to get him a ticket for the Iowa game...what I considered the best Home game last year. I paid $10 for a ticket with that was better than what I had. The Light Bulb turned on and I'll take my chances this year. There are so many open seats, my group can buy seperate tickets and still sit together...no problem.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your fine support of Gopher athletics.
 

Wcfan56 said:
Thank you for your fine support of Gopher athletics.
Click to expand...

Is this supposed to make me feel bad? It doesn't. The Rah Rah stuff doesn't work. I've been making donations for years- prior to the 'Mandatory Donations'. Every year I've got my Season Tickets- no questions asked- and then watched as the Athletic Department sold discounted tickets throughout the year. There were NO benefits to being a Season Ticket Holder except to say, "I am Gopher Season Ticket Holder"- to which most people's only reply is "Why?". I even bought extra tickets for years...until I could not even get people to take those. After last year's off the field sh*t show, why should I trust this administration? Claeys won 10 games and it felt like our program almost got the Death Penalty.

I am not delusional enough to think Gopher Athletics cares one bit if I get tickets or not...when I cancelled, no one even bothered to ask any reason for it. So why should I feel obligated to pay 3 to 4 times the going price of a ticket? Win games and put asses in seats. The rest will take care of itself including fed up alumni types like me.
 

DougMN said:
Is this supposed to make me feel bad? It doesn't. The Rah Rah stuff doesn't work. I've been making donations for years- prior to the 'Mandatory Donations'. Every year I've got my Season Tickets- no questions asked- and then watched as the Athletic Department sold discounted tickets throughout the year. There were NO benefits to being a Season Ticket Holder except to say, "I am Gopher Season Ticket Holder"- to which most people's only reply is "Why?". I even bought extra tickets for years...until I could not even get people to take those. After last year's off the field sh*t show, why should I trust this administration? Claeys won 10 games and it felt like our program almost got the Death Penalty.

I am not delusional enough to think Gopher Athletics cares one bit if I get tickets or not...when I cancelled, no one even bothered to ask any reason for it. So why should I feel obligated to pay 3 to 4 times the going price of a ticket? Win games and put asses in seats. The rest will take care of itself including fed up alumni types like me.
Click to expand...

Dougmn you are spot on. Since I started buying season tickets over a decade ago, our group has gone from 8 to 3 seats. I never hear of anyone actually adding season tickets or hear of anyone buying for the first time. Most of the people I know have left because of the poor leadership and decision making coming from the AD's office (season ticket price gouging, complete incompetent management of the team and process over the winter with the players). That aside, season ticket holders continue to be an afterthought. I am underwhelmed with the new loyalty program to date. Fluff, no substance. Offer real things! How about getting a ticket strategy in place that makes sense for season ticket holders? How about encouraging a game day atmosphere on campus? I pay over $1000 to park game day. Year over, fewer are purchasing parking passes as evidence by the many open parking spaces and dying tailgate atmosphere. Plus, you can get parking passes on Craiglist for $20! I have been to many road games as well as bowl games. How about real travel packages that do not cost 3k for a weekend (Creative Charters)? How about DQ Club access for all season ticket holders? There are many things, including continued winning they can do to inspire people to come out and support the program. To this point, their "loyalty" to those who have stuck with them in person and with their wallet through some tough and disappointing times continues to fall short. Offering access to player autographs and such is a poor attempt to inspire new sales or even placate those of us who continue to show up.
 

DougMN said:
Is this supposed to make me feel bad? It doesn't. The Rah Rah stuff doesn't work. I've been making donations for years- prior to the 'Mandatory Donations'. Every year I've got my Season Tickets- no questions asked- and then watched as the Athletic Department sold discounted tickets throughout the year. There were NO benefits to being a Season Ticket Holder except to say, "I am Gopher Season Ticket Holder"- to which most people's only reply is "Why?". I even bought extra tickets for years...until I could not even get people to take those. After last year's off the field sh*t show, why should I trust this administration? Claeys won 10 games and it felt like our program almost got the Death Penalty.

I am not delusional enough to think Gopher Athletics cares one bit if I get tickets or not...when I cancelled, no one even bothered to ask any reason for it. So why should I feel obligated to pay 3 to 4 times the going price of a ticket? Win games and put asses in seats. The rest will take care of itself including fed up alumni types like me.
Click to expand...

+1
 

1967 2.0 said:
Dougmn you are spot on. Since I started buying season tickets over a decade ago, our group has gone from 8 to 3 seats. I never hear of anyone actually adding season tickets or hear of anyone buying for the first time. Most of the people I know have left because of the poor leadership and decision making coming from the AD's office (season ticket price gouging, complete incompetent management of the team and process over the winter with the players). That aside, season ticket holders continue to be an afterthought. I am underwhelmed with the new loyalty program to date. Fluff, no substance. Offer real things! How about getting a ticket strategy in place that makes sense for season ticket holders? How about encouraging a game day atmosphere on campus? I pay over $1000 to park game day. Year over, fewer are purchasing parking passes as evidence by the many open parking spaces and dying tailgate atmosphere. Plus, you can get parking passes on Craiglist for $20! I have been to many road games as well as bowl games. How about real travel packages that do not cost 3k for a weekend (Creative Charters)? How about DQ Club access for all season ticket holders? There are many things, including continued winning they can do to inspire people to come out and support the program. To this point, their "loyalty" to those who have stuck with them in person and with their wallet through some tough and disappointing times continues to fall short. Offering access to player autographs and such is a poor attempt to inspire new sales or even placate those of us who continue to show up.
Click to expand...

I agree the benefits of being a season ticket holder have ... just not been there.

I'll say this that it appears there is at least some recognition at the U that season ticket holders should get more than the right to pay more... just because:

https://t.e2ma.net/click/jfee4/z3jfpt/vo52cg

We'll see how that pays off or not.
 

DougMN said:
Is this supposed to make me feel bad? It doesn't. The Rah Rah stuff doesn't work. I've been making donations for years- prior to the 'Mandatory Donations'. Every year I've got my Season Tickets- no questions asked- and then watched as the Athletic Department sold discounted tickets throughout the year. There were NO benefits to being a Season Ticket Holder except to say, "I am Gopher Season Ticket Holder"- to which most people's only reply is "Why?". I even bought extra tickets for years...until I could not even get people to take those. After last year's off the field sh*t show, why should I trust this administration? Claeys won 10 games and it felt like our program almost got the Death Penalty.

I am not delusional enough to think Gopher Athletics cares one bit if I get tickets or not...when I cancelled, no one even bothered to ask any reason for it. So why should I feel obligated to pay 3 to 4 times the going price of a ticket? Win games and put asses in seats. The rest will take care of itself including fed up alumni types like me.
Click to expand...

Not gonna argue with the rest but there is a benefit if you like the people sitting around you. That's the main reason we keep coming back. That "benefit" isn't provided by the U, it's provided by the crew of Season Ticket holders around us.

Going back to Teague, the U has told Season Ticket Holders:

1st: We don't need you. Corporations will buy your seats anyway. (THAT didn't last long..)
2nd: We don't have to give you anything. Coupons for things you can use, discounts around town, shot at cheap extra tickets, not even T-Shirts or Homecoming buttons!
3rd: We can't dilute any money we're already getting. As long as we have to only worry about filling 8 to 10,000 seats rather than the 15 to 20,000 seats at the Dome, we're not gonna take the chance. We're not really worried what you do.

Only the 3rd is understandable, but it still ends-up being a "F.U" to Season Tickets holders.

They'll be covered again this season by WI and NE fans. If the haters are right and the Gophers struggle to get to 5-6 wins this year, then in 2018 that 50,805 seat TCF is gonna look a lot like the 62,000 seat Metrodome did.

Half-full.
 

DougMN said:
I dropped my Season Tickets this year. Why should I pay $70+ for a ticket when I can walk up to ANY game and pay $10-$20? I had a friend in town last year and needed to get him a ticket for the Iowa game...what I considered the best Home game last year. I paid $10 for a ticket with that was better than what I had. The Light Bulb turned on and I'll take my chances this year. There are so many open seats, my group can buy seperate tickets and still sit together...no problem.
Click to expand...

DougMN - you are right. Some on here will play that ridiculous "supporting the U" card, but even they know it is nonsense. Sadly. I was a season ticket holder for many years - took my family to every game. We had a group of 18. That group went to 12 then to 8 and is now at 0. Goose egg. I still go to many games - including road games - but pay a fraction of the price. Supply and Demand is a proven fact and it trumps "supporting the U" 100% of the time. I said when I dropped the tix that I hope the U someday has enough demand that my decision will hurt me financially - for the U I hope so - but that time is far away.... even further if we expand to 80K seats [emoji846].


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

1967 2.0 said:
Dougmn you are spot on. Since I started buying season tickets over a decade ago, our group has gone from 8 to 3 seats. I never hear of anyone actually adding season tickets or hear of anyone buying for the first time. Most of the people I know have left because of the poor leadership and decision making coming from the AD's office (season ticket price gouging, complete incompetent management of the team and process over the winter with the players). That aside, season ticket holders continue to be an afterthought. I am underwhelmed with the new loyalty program to date. Fluff, no substance. Offer real things! How about getting a ticket strategy in place that makes sense for season ticket holders? How about encouraging a game day atmosphere on campus? I pay over $1000 to park game day. Year over, fewer are purchasing parking passes as evidence by the many open parking spaces and dying tailgate atmosphere. Plus, you can get parking passes on Craiglist for $20! I have been to many road games as well as bowl games. How about real travel packages that do not cost 3k for a weekend (Creative Charters)? How about DQ Club access for all season ticket holders? There are many things, including continued winning they can do to inspire people to come out and support the program. To this point, their "loyalty" to those who have stuck with them in person and with their wallet through some tough and disappointing times continues to fall short. Offering access to player autographs and such is a poor attempt to inspire new sales or even placate those of us who continue to show up.
Click to expand...

Bullseye! For a school with as widely acclaimed business school (Carlson) the U of M sure doesn't practice what it teaches! Biggest **** ups on the planet is in management at the U of M AD dept....
 

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