As far as the "fan experience" goes, the more fans in the stadium the more fun the experience is. There were only 20,000 there last night for the home opener, and I would say over 5,000 were students. Why so few for opening night? Should have been over 25,000.
My thought is they need to take a look at their ticket prices. At $25 a crack, that's a lot of money for a family of four. Your talking $110 just to park and get into the stadium. That doesn't include concessions, any souvenirs, or gas $. If you're paying that much money, the average fan is only going to go to one or two games all season.
What if they dropped ticket prices to $15? Would that bring in more fans? I believe it will and when more fans come and enjoy their evening, more fans will come back.

I think Labor Day weekend affects home attendance plus people aren't in the flow of FB season yet.

(08-31-2014 10:29 AM)letsgoblue Wrote:  As far as the "fan experience" goes, the more fans in the stadium the more fun the experience is. There were only 20,000 there last night for the home opener, and I would say over 5,000 were students. Why so few for opening night? Should have been over 25,000.
My thought is they need to take a look at their ticket prices. At $25 a crack, that's a lot of money for a family of four. Your talking $110 just to park and get into the stadium. That doesn't include concessions, any souvenirs, or gas $. If you're paying that much money, the average fan is only going to go to one or two games all season.
What if they dropped ticket prices to $15? Would that bring in more fans? I believe it will and when more fans come and enjoy their evening, more fans will come back.

If a family of four is willing to shell out $110 for tickets/parking plus 50-60 dollars more for food/drinks/souvenirs. You would think that four fan plans at $280 would be the sensible option. Splitting the cost with 2 or 3 similar sized families would make it affordable. The stickler would be haggling over who gets tickets for certain games...

(08-31-2014 11:42 AM)FMRocket Wrote:  

(08-31-2014 10:29 AM)letsgoblue Wrote:  As far as the "fan experience" goes, the more fans in the stadium the more fun the experience is. There were only 20,000 there last night for the home opener, and I would say over 5,000 were students. Why so few for opening night? Should have been over 25,000.
My thought is they need to take a look at their ticket prices. At $25 a crack, that's a lot of money for a family of four. Your talking $110 just to park and get into the stadium. That doesn't include concessions, any souvenirs, or gas $. If you're paying that much money, the average fan is only going to go to one or two games all season.
What if they dropped ticket prices to $15? Would that bring in more fans? I believe it will and when more fans come and enjoy their evening, more fans will come back.

If a family of four is willing to shell out $110 for tickets/parking plus 50-60 dollars more for food/drinks/souvenirs. You would think that four fan plans at $280 would be the sensible option. Splitting the cost with 2 or 3 similar sized families would make it affordable. The stickler would be haggling over who gets tickets for certain games...

UT needs to do a better job of marketing the other ticket plans. All they promote is the Fan Plan. For example - there is the Flex Plan, where you get 12 ticket vouchers for $180 ($15/ticket). You can only use 2 vouchers for the Mizzo & BG games, but other than that you can use any # of vouchers per game. Or there is the Touchdown Zone Plan - a season ticket in section 10 or 26, for half-off, $90 ($15/game).

I thought the crowd size exceeded my expectations, but, from my west side viewpoint, the upper level east bleachers (fan plan section) were almost completely filled, but the lower bowl over there looked very sparse. You don't see that at any other MAC stadium. Kinda tells me that we need to rethink our ticket pricing structure a bit.

I also really liked how they made the 50/50 interactive with real time updates on the scoreboard. There were still lots of people buying tickets late into the 2nd quarter which didn't appear to be happening in previous years, so that seems to have turned out well.

(08-31-2014 12:06 PM)therockets046 Wrote:  I thought the crowd size exceeded my expectations, but, from my west side viewpoint, the upper level east bleachers (fan plan section) were almost completely filled, but the lower bowl over there looked very sparse. You don't see that at any other MAC stadium. Kinda tells me that we need to rethink our ticket pricing structure a bit.

I also really liked how they made the 50/50 interactive with real time updates on the scoreboard. There were still lots of people buying tickets late into the 2nd quarter which didn't appear to be happening in previous years, so that seems to have turned out well.

There was quite a bit of buzz about that near my seating. The $10k mark got people excited and then it seemed to jump up another 1k then another 1k quickly. Probably didn't hurt that the sellers were on the drop dead gorgeous side. uh, for such young ladies I mean....

(08-31-2014 12:06 PM)therockets046 Wrote:  I thought the crowd size exceeded my expectations, but, from my west side viewpoint, the upper level east bleachers (fan plan section) were almost completely filled, but the lower bowl over there looked very sparse. You don't see that at any other MAC stadium. Kinda tells me that we need to rethink our ticket pricing structure a bit.

I also really liked how they made the 50/50 interactive with real time updates on the scoreboard. There were still lots of people buying tickets late into the 2nd quarter which didn't appear to be happening in previous years, so that seems to have turned out well.

I have mentioned that they need to try a fan plan plus, for the lower bowl seating on the east side, something like $100. Doesn't look good on TV with the empty lower bowl on the east side.