ODU Football Tickets
Hot seats
Stories by RICH RADFORD | The Virginian-Pilot
Rich Radford, (757) 446-2463, rich.radford@pilotonline.com
THE POPULARITY OF FOOTBALL at Old Dominion University has mystified many, caught some off guard and led to frustrations for others. // Based on a Pricewaterhouse-Coopers survey four years ago, it was projected that ODU would do well in its startup effort with football and could expect season-ticket sales of about 6,600.
What the school ended up with, though, qualifies as one of the most successful seasonticket launches of a football team in NCAA history. The Monarchs received requests for 14,859 season tickets for a team that has yet to play a game.
Only one Football Championship Subdivision program in the country – Montana – will have a season-ticket base this season larger than ODU. The Grizzlies, who cap their season tickets at a little more than 19,000, have won two national championships in the past 15 years, have posted 23 consecutive winning seasons and have been playing football since 1897.
ODU’s launch rivals that of South Florida, which 12 years ago began a program with designs on quickly moving into the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) and sold 20,619 season tickets for a first-year team.
Mark Benson believed all along that ODU’s football team would play in front of sold-out crowds this fall. Benson, assistant vice president of athletic development and the former director of the school’s Big Blue Club, figured it would just take a healthy walk-up crowd on game day to do it.
“I thought we’d have to rely on single-game sales to get there,” Benson said. “I didn’t expect we’d sell the stadium out with season tickets.”
Throughout the country, successful FCS programs are viewing Old Dominion with a degree of envy. The nextlargest season-ticket base among FCS teams belongs to Delaware, which sold 11,225 last season.
Appalachian State was coming off three consecutive FCS national titles last fall when it sold a school-record 7,141 season tickets. Georgia Southern, which has won six national titles, topped out at 4,700 in 2008.
Meanwhile, officials at Wyoming are crowing about season-ticket sales that have reached the high-water mark of 7,837. Wyoming is an FBS school, yet it is taking a visit by national title contender Texas this season to bump the Cowboys’ season tickets to half what ODU has.
Because of the limited size of Foreman Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium – it will seat 19,782 for football – ODU officials had to turn down 1,065 requests. Many who were turned down had jumped at ODU’s Family Package plan – tickets for two adults and two children for $290 ($190 less than four regular tickets).
The problem: ODU limited the number of those tickets to 1,000. Knowing the family plan was oversold well beyond its limit, ODU officials encouraged individuals to upgrade, but the pleas were not always heeded.
Benson said the school sent out letters a year ago encouraging season-ticket applicants to “join the Big Blue Club by May 1, 2009, to guarantee your season tickets and improve your seat location.”
Benson said the school “called those we knew might not make the cut” to let them know that if they didn’t upgrade their order, they faced the real possibility they might end up with a refund and not the tickets they hoped for.
Debbie White, senior associate athletic director at ODU, said all ticket orders tied to Big Blue Club memberships were fulfilled. That accounted for more than 8,000 seats.
Annual membership in the Big Blue Club is $100, which guarantees rights to buy two season tickets to football. A $300 donation brought the promise of buying four this year.
At the rate ODU is selling tickets, such assurances might be hard to meet in the future. It appears ODU might be entering a new age for athletics. The school never has been in a situation where selling out season tickets in any sport was part of the plan.
The region’s hunger for ODU football has changed that landscape, and the impact may reach beyond football.
“We were at just over 4,700 season tickets for men’s basketball last year,” Benson said. “We fully expect that number to jump. Our cap for season tickets for men’s basketball is somewhere around 5,400. We could reach it this winter.”
While ODU was able to fill 13,794 season-ticket requests for football, there’s a chance that number will shrink in 2010. To accommodate more season-ticket requests this season, ODU decided to offer each visiting team only 500 tickets. In 2011, when the Monarchs becomes a member of the Colonial Athletic Association for football, they must set aside 1,000 tickets for visiting teams.
School officials expect they can take care of those 500 tickets through attrition – seasonticket buyers in 2009 who don’t buy in 2010.
As for this season, those who were in the group of 1,065 who wanted season tickets but were denied will be placed on a special e-mail list. If all of the student-section tickets are not claimed or all of the visitors tickets aren’t bought, those who lost out on season tickets will have the chance to get a game ticket, beginning the Thursday before each game.
Recipients on that e-mail list will receive a special code and will get first shot at buying single-game tickets the night before the public sale.
That is, if there are any to sell.
“In the past, people have always been able to get a ticket to an ODU game if they needed or really wanted one,” Benson said. “Now, it is what it is.
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