If the Big-10 has struggled with this issue, you can bet other conferences have as well.


IOWA CITY — Nebraska football fans have a well-earned reputation for taking over opponents’ stadiums as well as bowl venues. However Husker fans’ lukewarm interest in the 2014 Gator Bowl left a Big Red deficit for the school — and the Big Ten — in ticket sales.

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.


Read more: http://thegazette.com/subject/sports/uns...z31tnsFJ3X

Surely all three factors that they mentioned played a role in dampening demand, but oddly they omit the growing popularity of online ticket brokering sites as a factor, as there were surely more than 1,748 Husker fans at that game.

Nebraska fans (like many other fans) are not stupid. It's common knowledge you can get tickets cheaper from other sources. Just the bowls screwing the schools like usual.

(05-16-2014 12:08 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  If the Big-10 has struggled with this issue, you can bet other conferences have as well.


IOWA CITY — Nebraska football fans have a well-earned reputation for taking over opponents’ stadiums as well as bowl venues. However Husker fans’ lukewarm interest in the 2014 Gator Bowl left a Big Red deficit for the school — and the Big Ten — in ticket sales.

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.


Read more: http://thegazette.com/subject/sports/uns...z31tnsFJ3X

I believe the Nebraska fan base may have not been too enthusiastic about supporting their coach.
Didn't an audiotape surface where Pelini went flat out bonkers talking about the "fair weather fans"?
That would be an issue that would make me think a long while before I committed my time and my money to head to Jacksonville.

(05-16-2014 12:20 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  Surely all three factors that they mentioned played a role in dampening demand, but oddly they omit the growing popularity of online ticket brokering sites as a factor, as there were surely more than 1,748 Husker fans at that game.

This is becoming a common problem, and not just for any one conference. The bowls aren't doing the schools they invite when they make the better seating options available on line and expect the schools' fans to pay full freight for less attractive seats just to satisfy an arbitrary commitment.

I don't think it will be long before the P5 conferences put a stop to this.

Either the bowl games themselves are dumping the tickets on the secondary market, or people who get tickets in other ways -- from corporate sponsors, etc. -- are selling those tickets because they'd rather have some cash instead of going to the game. They're making it difficult for the schools to sell the huge block of tickets they have to sell at inflated prices.

Just another way the bowls are leeching money out of the participating schools. If the schools/conferences "cut out the middleman" and operated the bowls themselves, they could put an end to it.

(05-16-2014 12:58 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Just another way the bowls are leeching money out of the participating schools. If the schools/conferences "cut out the middleman" and operated the bowls themselves, they could put an end to it.

Quite. If they want to sell official bowl allocation seating at premium prices, the seats have to be premium seats.

I expect when the next round of negotiations come up, a lot of these ticket requirements clauses will be gone. The bowls need the conferences more than the conferences need any one particular bowl, and the conferences will be able to negotiate better deals for themselves. That wasn't the case years ago, but these days, it's pretty easy to start up a new bowl or turn a minor bowl into a major bowl with the right money and combination of teams. Except for the contract bowls, the rest of the lineup is interchangeable and the bowls offering the best deals will get the best teams.

(05-16-2014 01:02 PM)prp Wrote:  I expect when the next round of negotiations come up, a lot of these ticket requirements clauses will be gone. The bowls need the conferences more than the conferences need any one particular bowl, and the conferences will be able to negotiate better deals for themselves. That wasn't the case years ago, but these days, it's pretty easy to start up a new bowl or turn a minor bowl into a major bowl with the right money and combination of teams. Except for the contract bowls, the rest of the lineup is interchangeable and the bowls offering the best deals will get the best teams.

I thought that was already done with this new 6 year cycle? Or did they just lower the limits?
But I agree, if you are going to pay through the nose and by tickets from the school, then they need to be the best seats.
If the bowls still make the school for this 6 year cycle own up to the tickets, then I bet on the next 6 year bowl cycle it'll made that no school is left on the hook and everything is sold via stub hub or other ticketing site.

(05-16-2014 12:35 PM)ken d Wrote:  I don't think it will be long before the P5 conferences put a stop to this.

I don't think they put much thought into things in the presence of wheelbarrows of broadcaster and bowl cash when it comes time for broadcaster renewal time.

They'll get pissed and talk a good game, and then Papa Fox or ESPN will roll in the next crop of green, and then this all happens again.

Drop in the bucket for the BIG

Ticket commitments won't go away, but they will be reduced. The point of the commitment is to ensure the participating schools build the game up as much as possible. It operates under the theory that there are three main groups of attending fans: locals, fans of one of the schools, and fans of the other school, and the bowl owner/operator knows the local fans and the two participating schools know their fans better than anyone else. Therefore, to maximize interest/money from all three relevant groups of fans, both schools and the bowls need skin in the game. Ticket commitments ensure that the participating schools have skin in the game.

The truth is that bowls make huge amounts of money for their participating teams. If a school "loses" money on the game, it's because the school views the event as a PR opportunity and spent a phenomenal amount of money for advertising purposes (i.e. sending the band to the game) and/or because conferences tax bowl revenue heavily. However, neither of those factors have *anything* to do with how the bowls are administered.