Basketball tickets about to become hotter commodity





Seating in Memorial Center, the airiest of basketball arenas, is about to get more intimate for East Tennessee State fans.
University officials are making plans to tighten seating designations for the upcoming basketball season to meet state fire codes. Capacity will shrink by more than half, to about 5,740 seats.
Jo Ann Paty, ETSU?s associate athletic director for advancement, says the old arrangement simply wouldn?t fly anymore in the 29-year-old building.
?The Dome really started as a football facility and they just kind of started playing basketball,? Paty said Friday. ?In the early days, people sat up on the sides and there wasn?t any floor seating to speak of. When we added seats on the floor to make it more fan friendly, and then started having concerts, we were pushing the envelope.
?The state of Tennessee realized we didn?t have a life safety plan, which means how many people can get out in a specified amount of time. All the codes were reworked and revamped after 9/11. This is the existing code and we now have to comply.?
Letters have been sent to all season-ticket holders ? there were almost 1,400 last year ? detailing the new policy. About 2,600 seats will be ?priority? and require an annual minimum donation to the Pirate Club of $100 per ticket order, not per seat.
Fans who are already Pirate Club members will see no change in their seating arrangements. Those who hold season tickets but aren?t members of the Pirate Club will have to contribute to continue to receive priority seats or settle for a view from the periphery of the West side stands.
Ticket orders must be renewed by July 31.
?It doesn?t affect our current season-ticket holders so much because so many are already Pirate Club supporters,? said Paty. ?We have a $2.2 million scholarship budget to meet and want to give the best seats to those who support us. Seating is going to be at a premium.?
Paty says most of the feedback she?s gotten has been positive, with a few exceptions.
?We?re hoping people will understand this is just a sign of the times,? she said. ?I?m afraid if they decide to give up their season tickets, they may have trouble getting them back.?
There are 12,000 permanent seats in the Dome ? 6,000 on each side ? but that could soon change. All seats above row 20 on both sides may be removed.
?It will affect graduation and any concerts, too,? said Adam Walton, ETSU director of business and ticket operations. ?We looked at putting the court in the middle of the floor to maximize our capacity for basketball, but people in the first 15 rows of the permanent seats wouldn?t be able to see the court. Our hands are kind of tied.?
The court is currently situated on the West side of the building, with retractable bleachers extending down from the permanent seats. There is seating for 2,500 on the floor and 3,240 permanent seats that can be used on the West side.
There apparently aren?t any practical structural changes to the Dome that could satisfy current fire codes.
?If anything ever brought the need for a new basketball arena into focus,? said Paty, ?this is it.?
The restrictions will obviously put more of a premium on tickets for ETSU games, including those at the Atlantic

See HODGE, Page 3B ?Continued from Page 1
Sun Conference tournament, which the university will again host next March. The Bucs regularly drew about 4,000 fans to their games last season and had more than 6,000 for their A-Sun quarterfinal. ?We?re looking to sell out some games next year, which is a positive,? said Walton. ?The changes add value to that ticket, makes it harder to get.? Said Paty, ?We believe we have something of value. We?re proud of the product we put out there and aren?t ashamed to ask people to support it.?
Kelly Hodge is managing sports editor of the Johnson City Press. He can be reached at khodge@johnsoncitypress.com

"If anything ever brought the need for a new basketball arena into focus," said Paty, "this is it."

See, this move is grandstanding. It is a thinly veiled move to try and drum up support for a new arena- built the way they want it (whatever that is)- and in doing so they will sacrifice any future plans of having a real event or concert or, yes, even football there.

Come on- Foundation. Now's the time. Now's the time to start speaking up and not being so please and thank you, may I have another.

2001 or no- that place had 14,000 in for an NBA exhibition and was full when Randy Moss came.

And the fire marshall knew about it.

This is the quote to which I was referring. This makes me sick. Some of those in the department are so saturated in their own mess that they beliee this stuff.

"We believe we have something of value. We?re proud of the product we put out there and aren?t ashamed to ask people to support it."- JoAnn Paty, Asst. AD (Someone who influences athletics at our school.)

When I got my renewal form, I just about threw it away. Forcing us to join the Pirate club to keep our seats really ticked me off. You would think that the University would be rewarding long-term ticket holders (20+ years), but no, if we don't cough up $100 then we lose our mid court seats and move to the end. Shouldn't surprise me though. I stopped giving to the Pirate club when football was dropped. Guess I will have to join again. At least I can get ice cream at half time. I am guessing that the REAL reason that this policy has been put into place is that giving to the pirate club has dropped dramatically and they need to boost their funds.

Please do the good of the department a favor and give that $100 to the Foundation. Seeing a Bartow coached team from midcourt is like being the closest to smell a pile of horse mess.

The fact that they have that little regard for those who have been there through the years, despite their many blunders, should be enough for fans to just buy tickets at the gate for the couple of dcent home games we have net year.

This is not a surprise to anyone, is it, though?

Colleges do this all the time, and actually this fee is kind of reasonable.

Doesn't make it right- doesn't come at a good time for them.

Best thing to do is boycott them. Throw that ticket form away.

They start getting 1000 fans a game and nobody goes along with this- heads will roll.

This is kind of random, but in the new season of South Park there's an episode where the people in town get so smug and high on themselves that they start enjoying the smell of their farts.
If only someone could draw a picture of Cartman with an ETSU jersey on.

RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!!

Consider said authority respected. Pitt. I don't know what they're thiinking. I say, "let them be banished to the other forum or to Elizabethton, whichever comes first!"

Try to look past their indiscretions, Pitt. They just weren't raised any better.

Please tell me you understood the Eric Cartman reference.

This is stupid. I think that this is just a way for them to try to get money out of people, but all they are doing is screwing the fans. Its gonna be awesome having people have to sit on the other side of the dome for games.

Or better yet, give them a reason NOT to renew their tickets. Dumbasses, students already don't show up, and less and less fans are, hell maybe if they run everybody off then the powers that be can't count tickets sold as well as the sports staff at the JC Press in their attendance numbers anymore. ;-)
:stirthepot:

Well Lover, I said back in December (or was it January?) that ETSU fans should boycot the product and show their displeasure.

I was told by BucinIowa that it was a bad idea because it might hurt the players' feelings.

Heck, why play the games? It might hurt their feelings when they lose.

Here's a counterpoint though... Do other schools our size charge for tickets like this? I mean I know this big schools do obviously, that's how they can afford to pay their coaches million dollar salaries. Someone should look and tell us how many SoCon, OVC, Big South and A-Sun schools charge this extra fee like ETSU is going to do. How much it is at the other places, what are the benefits, etc...

This was tried at ETSU around 93-94 or so. It failed miserably, maybe things have changed.

HOW did it fail miserably?

It was called the "Priority Seating Plan". The team went into the tank and folks were unwilling to pay extra for the priviledge of retaining their seating. As I understand, ticket sales went down and so did total revenue.

This appears to be a variation of that concept.

How many years have other mid-majors been doing this? Call around Doctor. I mean I don't like it, but why not? Pay your 100 bucks, you're a member of the Pirate Club, you get GOOD seats for home games, and you get to enter in to that little halftime thing they do with the pizza and all that. It's really not a bad deal.
If ETSU was where it SHOULD BE, the minimum would be a 500 dollar donation, plus your tickets, with higher priority given to those who donate more, i.e. the more you give, the better the seats are.
And another thing, who does this affect? The average joe that buys there tickets the night of the game? No, if affects the same loyal 2-3 thousand fans who have stuck with ETSU when football was dropped, the revolving door of athletic director's, and now this. They'll do it, if they want good seats, I mean look, everyone wants football, we want this, we want that, well guess what? IT'S NOT FREE!! It would be nice if the crap-smelling trees on campus by Rogers-Stout grew 100 dollar bills instead of leaves, but they don't. ETSU isn't UNICEF, maybe if UNICEF started a college basketball team you could pull for them... I bet they could play in the A-Sun.

You read far more into my post than you should. I made no comment on whether or not I liked the program or whether or not other schools used a similar program. I said it was tried before at ETSU and failed miserably.

I understand that, I'm just trying to see their side of it as well. I think after the first or second NCAA tourney bid we had a couple of years ago, this would have def. worked, I still don't think it'll be a big deal.