(04-29-2018 08:09 AM)wmmii Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 07:41 AM)TribeInTheBurg Wrote:  For the basketball example, getting 4 tickets in the lower seats requires a $1000 seat license fee. That $1000 previously went towards Tribe Club perks as well as the seat license, whereas now you would have to separately donate an additional $1000 to the Tribe Club to get the perks you got before. The hope is that someone can clarify whether that example is correct or mistaken.

Not true. Here is what the email link said:

"A non-tax-deductible seat license will be required for the right to purchase up to 4 (four) season tickets in the following sections at our men’s basketball games (the seat license is per seat):

Courtside $500
Parquet $250
Box $250
Mezzanine $0
Student–

The sentence, then, needs clarification, as the very end says"(the seat license is per seat)".

(04-29-2018 08:22 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  

(04-29-2018 08:09 AM)wmmii Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 07:41 AM)TribeInTheBurg Wrote:  For the basketball example, getting 4 tickets in the lower seats requires a $1000 seat license fee. That $1000 previously went towards Tribe Club perks as well as the seat license, whereas now you would have to separately donate an additional $1000 to the Tribe Club to get the perks you got before. The hope is that someone can clarify whether that example is correct or mistaken.

Not true. Here is what the email link said:

"A non-tax-deductible seat license will be required for the right to purchase up to 4 (four) season tickets in the following sections at our men’s basketball games (the seat license is per seat):

Courtside $500
Parquet $250
Box $250
Mezzanine $0
Student–

The sentence, then, needs clarification, as the very end says"(the seat license is per seat)".

I emailed the office on this same point. For basketball, it is indeed $250 per seat. You can buy up to four seats at $250 each. I, too, found this confusing.
From Mike McCarney:
"The seat license is per seat for basketball.

Basically, the most you can purchase is 4 season tickets in one of the sections that require the Seat Ticket License and the cost listed is the price per seat."

I'm just beginning to realize my combined cost increase for football and basketball.
My football donation will increase $500 to keep what I have.
Now I pay an additional $750 licensing before I purchase my three basketball tickets. There are plenty of good seats at low prices in
the upper level of the Hall. How many seats in the lower Hall will be empty in coming years?
I don't mind increasing my support by 10% or so, but not this.

(04-29-2018 09:57 AM)DSL Wrote:  I'm just beginning to realize my combined cost increase for football and basketball.
My football donation will increase $500 to keep what I have.
Now I pay an additional $750 licensing before I purchase my three basketball tickets. There are plenty of good seats at low prices in
the upper level of the Hall. How many seats in the lower Hall will be empty in coming years?
I don't mind increasing my support by 10% or so, but not this.

I'm not sure if this applies to your situation, but the football license pays for up to four seats with one license fee, while basketball is per seat. Can anyone tell me why that is? Also, according to the FAQ sheet, the seat license for football will also count toward your basketball seat license, but this appears to be for 2018 only. Why? Who knows?

Everyone,

I am trying to get clarification on your questions/concerns. I had hoped to have things nailed down before I posted. Not yet, though.

Here is what I definitely know:
1. The license fee you pay for your football seats will carry over and be counted for your basketball seats.
2. The total amount of license fees collected by the ticket office will continue to support Tribe Athletics, just as your previous donations have. What will happen is that the college will reduce (by the license fee totals) the annual amount requested from the Tribe Club to meet scholarship demands.

What I'm pretty sure of (but don't have the figures in front of me to back it up):
1. Football seating fees remain the same. There is no increase in the amounts needed per section. So, DSL, I'm not sure why your football give would increase $500.

(04-29-2018 08:22 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  

(04-29-2018 08:09 AM)wmmii Wrote:  

(04-28-2018 07:41 AM)TribeInTheBurg Wrote:  For the basketball example, getting 4 tickets in the lower seats requires a $1000 seat license fee. That $1000 previously went towards Tribe Club perks as well as the seat license, whereas now you would have to separately donate an additional $1000 to the Tribe Club to get the perks you got before. The hope is that someone can clarify whether that example is correct or mistaken.

You should be able to use the seat license fee for both football and basketball. Seems they now want $250 per seat for lower section plus want to limit you to 4 seats! Here is what the email link said:

"A non-tax-deductible seat license will be required for the right to purchase up to 4 (four) season tickets in the following sections at our men’s basketball games (the seat license is per seat):

Courtside $500
Parquet $250
Box $250
Mezzanine $0

The sentence, then, needs clarification, as the very end says"(the seat license is per seat)".

Good catch! I have corrected my post plus added that the seat license for football should be able to used for basketball also!

This is not great but W&M isn’t the only place that is implementing this type of change. The initial sticker shock is less than desirable but the 100% percent donation write off helps a little bit compared to the old 80% write off. From what I heard, JMU didn’t have a letter go out or have anyone address their “tribe club” at their spring game to offer a heads up. I do have to credit to this department for being proactive despite the message. So as I understood the conversation a few weeks ago, if I used to buy tix at 100 each 2x and donated 800$ then I used to only be able to write off 800$ @ 80% which includes the tix....and now if I donate 800 then I write off the full donation.

Yeah, it's not W&M's fault that this is happening and it's good that they're out in front of it. Despite everyone's confusion, it's happening now instead of the week before the deadline renewal. Hopefully that gives the athletic department time to get another FAQ email/mailing out to clear things up.

Why not sell the tickets at face value separately. Then the purchaser makes a tax-deductible Tribe Club deduction. This would appear to eliminate the license".

(04-30-2018 05:54 AM)bubbadog57 Wrote:  Why not sell the tickets at face value separately. Then the purchaser makes a tax-deductible Tribe Club deduction. This would appear to eliminate the license".

I think that I can answer your question pretty easily. To take the approach that you are suggesting would almost certainly result in an overall reduction in financial support of Tribe Athletics and take us a large step backwards. The whole theory behind the movement years (decades?) ago to require a season ticket holder to make a certain contribution to the Tribe Club in order to purchase season tickets in the best sections was to encourage (require) Tribe supporters to support the program in ways other than just buying a ticket. For many of us, it was probably our first exposure to the whole Tribe club concept and was the first time that many of us began to understand the financial efforts that it takes just to put our teams on the playing field. If, as you suggest, W&M simply decided to go back to the days of allowing you to buy the season ticket at face value, with no strings attached, many of the individuals who have only been making Tribe Club contributions because they had to would possibly quit making contributions altogether because they no longer need to in order to buy their season ticket.

Our reaction to the new tax law should certainly not have been to create new policies that almost certainly was going to lead to an overall loss in revenues used to support Tribe Athletics. My contention is, and has been throughout every posting that I have made on this subject, is that W&M should not be using the "new tax law" as the excuse behind trying to generate more overall revenues.

There is no doubt that under the new tax law, W&M had to find a way to carve out the mandatory monies that a season ticket holder had to contribute to Tribe Athletics in order to have the right to purchase season tickets in certain premium sections. To allow this required contribution to continue to be linked to a charitable contribution to the Tribe Club would have resulted in the entire contribution being non deductible on the federal income tax return starting in 2018. To that extent the seat license makes sense, cleanly segregating the portion of a donor's contribution that is required to be able to purchase a season's ticket into a non deductible category while allowing any extra contributions that a donor makes to be 100% deductible.

My main issue comes down to how the Tribe Club has chosen to view these separate contributions in their totality. I understand that under the new coding of these contributions, the amount that I spend on a ticket license transfers from Tribe Club revenues to ticket revenues. The Tribe Club, as such, will see their revenues drop if every donor simply reduces their Tribe Club contribution by an amount equal to the seat license fee. However, as Mrs. Got Ribe points out, while the Tribe Club revenue will now go down, their required obligations to generate revenues in order to fund scholarships will go down by an equal amount. The only difference is instead of me giving a dollar to the Tribe Club who in turns gives it to Tribe Athletics to fund a scholarship, I am giving it directly to Tribe Athletics as additional ticket revenue that I have to fund in order to purchase my season ticket. My support of Tribe Athletics, separate from the face value of the season tickets that I actually purchase, will not have changed one iota. If I do not change the total of my disbursements at all, the sum of what I will be giving the Tribe Club directly under the new landscape, plus the reduction in monies that the Tribe Club will have to pay out to fund scholarships because of my purchase of a seat license, will be exactly the same as what I was giving to the Tribe Club before. Under the new playbook, however, the Tribe Club will consider me less of a donor because they have elected (been required?) to have me pay the part of my Tribe Club donation that I used to make to cover the "required" amount tied to my season tickets directly to the ticket office instead of to the Tribe Club. My argument is that the Tribe Club should continue to see me as the same contributor that I was before and that the only thing that has changed is that I am being asked to cut two checks now instead of one.

(04-30-2018 05:54 AM)bubbadog57 Wrote:  Why not sell the tickets at face value separately. Then the purchaser makes a tax-deductible Tribe Club deduction. This would appear to eliminate the license".

If you itemize the receipt to include an individual ticket purchase for each game, but not "season tickets," you could perhaps have a loophole.

(04-30-2018 09:42 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  My argument is that the Tribe Club should continue to see me as the same contributor that I was before and that the only thing that has changed is that I am being asked to cut two checks now instead of one.

+1
My broken record concern - I want to keep my same donation, and keep my basketball parking. Tribe Club should recognize the total of the seat license fee and the Student-Athlete Excellence Donations together as the benchmark for perks such as parking. I already lost my halftime beer when they bumped the halftime reception to Gold status.

Some clarification:

1. If you pay a seat license for season tickets, your Tribe Club gift requirement will be waived for parking. So, you will get parking privileges based on your seat license fee.

2. You will receive Tribe Club loyalty points (at the rate of 1.5) for your seat license fee. So, your Tribe Club ranking will not be negatively impacted by paying a seat license.

(05-01-2018 07:28 AM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  Some clarification:

1. If you pay a seat license for season tickets, your Tribe Club gift requirement will be waived for parking. So, you will get parking privileges based on your seat license fee.

2. You will receive Tribe Club loyalty points (at the rate of 1.5) for your seat license fee. So, your Tribe Club ranking will not be negatively impacted by paying a seat license.

Mrs. Got Ribe,

Thanks as always for helping us out here. I had been told the same thing about the parking pass so it is good to hear your confirmation on the subject.

The next thing that I think needs total clarification is what I will call the marriage of license fees for football and basketball. The email that we got makes reference to the fact that if you pay for a seat license in football, the "balance" will go towards covering your license fee in basketball in "2018". I guess that the word "balance" has me a bit perplexed, but I have not mustered up the energy to call them back for clarification. In my situation, the best seats that we were able to get for football after the realignment require a $1000 license fee and I purchase 3 tickets out of the 4 that I could have. I wonder if by "balance" they are going to consider that I have $250 of unused license fee in football that I can apply to the $750 in fees that I will now have to pay for my 3 parquet seats in basketball, or if the $1000 license fee that I will have to pay in football will eliminate the $750 in license fees that they will want from me for basketball. I guess that I am going to need to call them for clarification on that, as well as whether the answer will be different after"2018".

(05-01-2018 07:28 AM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  Some clarification:

1. If you pay a seat license for season tickets, your Tribe Club gift requirement will be waived for parking. So, you will get parking privileges based on your seat license fee.

2. You will receive Tribe Club loyalty points (at the rate of 1.5) for your seat license fee. So, your Tribe Club ranking will not be negatively impacted by paying a seat license.

I just had a very pleasant and informative conversation with a staff member regarding the parking concern that I raised. He said that my particular situation, concerning the specific dollar amounts in question, was something that had not been anticipated as they hashed out the new policies. He did confirm what Mrs. Ribe said, that I would get a waiver and keep my nice, cozy Compton lot space. It seems that cases like mine are rare enough that they are being handled on a case by case basis, rather than being posted as part of the overall policy statement.

He also addressed a concern that I had raised previously about "sticker shock" for those who buy basketball tickets, but only give enough to cover the seat license. This was considered, but apparently a large majority of season ticket holders in the lower bowl make a large enough donation that this isn't a significant issue. That doesn't mean that there won't be some number of ticket holders who will be ticked, but the number shouldn't impact overall ticket sales much.

I agree with 75's point that the joining of football and basketball seat licenses (the "balance" being applied from football to basketball) was not crystal clear in the initial policy statement.

OK, I picked this fight, and now I'm done. Thanks to Mrs. Ribe for her input and to the ticket office and Tribe Club staff for hearing these concerns.

(05-01-2018 10:41 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 07:28 AM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  Some clarification:

1. If you pay a seat license for season tickets, your Tribe Club gift requirement will be waived for parking. So, you will get parking privileges based on your seat license fee.

2. You will receive Tribe Club loyalty points (at the rate of 1.5) for your seat license fee. So, your Tribe Club ranking will not be negatively impacted by paying a seat license.

The next thing that I think needs total clarification is what I will call the marriage of license fees for football and basketball. The email that we got makes reference to the fact that if you pay for a seat license in football, the "balance" will go towards covering your license fee in basketball in "2018". I guess that the word "balance" has me a bit perplexed, but I have not mustered up the energy to call them back for clarification. In my situation, the best seats that we were able to get for football after the realignment require a $1000 license fee and I purchase 3 tickets out of the 4 that I could have. I wonder if by "balance" they are going to consider that I have $250 of unused license fee in football that I can apply to the $750 in fees that I will now have to pay for my 3 parquet seats in basketball, or if the $1000 license fee that I will have to pay in football will eliminate the $750 in license fees that they will want from me for basketball. I guess that I am going to need to call them for clarification on that, as well as whether the answer will be different after"2018".

Your football license fee will count in total toward your basketball license fee. For instance, if you pay $1000 license fee for football, you will have credit of $1000 of basketball fees---that's four tickets in parquet, or better yet, two tickets courtside. I know you don't want to move, but you could come down and join us in the Lair.

As far as beyond 2018, the only thing that was explained to me is that "we don't know what the tax law will be in the coming years."

(05-01-2018 12:19 PM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 10:41 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  

(05-01-2018 07:28 AM)Mrs. Got Ribe Wrote:  Some clarification:

1. If you pay a seat license for season tickets, your Tribe Club gift requirement will be waived for parking. So, you will get parking privileges based on your seat license fee.

2. You will receive Tribe Club loyalty points (at the rate of 1.5) for your seat license fee. So, your Tribe Club ranking will not be negatively impacted by paying a seat license.

The next thing that I think needs total clarification is what I will call the marriage of license fees for football and basketball. The email that we got makes reference to the fact that if you pay for a seat license in football, the "balance" will go towards covering your license fee in basketball in "2018". I guess that the word "balance" has me a bit perplexed, but I have not mustered up the energy to call them back for clarification. In my situation, the best seats that we were able to get for football after the realignment require a $1000 license fee and I purchase 3 tickets out of the 4 that I could have. I wonder if by "balance" they are going to consider that I have $250 of unused license fee in football that I can apply to the $750 in fees that I will now have to pay for my 3 parquet seats in basketball, or if the $1000 license fee that I will have to pay in football will eliminate the $750 in license fees that they will want from me for basketball. I guess that I am going to need to call them for clarification on that, as well as whether the answer will be different after"2018".

Your football license fee will count in total toward your basketball license fee. For instance, if you pay $1000 license fee for football, you will have credit of $1000 of basketball fees---that's four tickets in parquet, or better yet, two tickets courtside. I know you don't want to move, but you could come down and join us in the Lair.

As far as beyond 2018, the only thing that was explained to me is that "we don't know what the tax law will be in the coming years."

Thanks for the additional information and the invitation. Don't know what I would do if I sat in a different seat after all of these years. And unfortunately my passion causes my mouth to take over the rest of my body sometimes and can lead to some embarrassing moments for family members around me. Lord knows what kind of trouble that I would get into if I had seats on the floor.