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pvk75 Offline
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Post: #1
New website for student tickets, guest sales
Spread the word, and help build student attendance.
https://niuhuskies.com/news/2019/5/1/gen...ckets.aspx
(This post was last modified: 05-01-2019 03:53 PM by pvk75.)
05-01-2019 02:41 PM
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IWokeUpLikeThis Online
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Post: #2
RE: New app for student ticket reservations, guest sales
Couldn't make it easier for the students. Ball's in their court.
05-01-2019 02:51 PM
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clcfball11 Offline
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RE: New app for student tickets, guest sales
At some point we're literally gonna have to pay the students to attend games. Years of terrible athletic marketing has created a culture where it's weird to care a lot about NIU sports while kids walk around in Illini gear.
05-01-2019 03:17 PM
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clcfball11 Offline
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RE: New app for student tickets, guest sales
Also, I can't believe this didn't exist already before now. They really still had to trek to the Convo for tickets? Christ
05-01-2019 03:18 PM
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dogdangit Offline
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RE: New app for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 03:18 PM)clcfball11 Wrote:  Also, I can't believe this didn't exist already before now. They really still had to trek to the Convo for tickets? Christ

Wrong, Students have to go to the Convo to pick up tickets if they purchased them for non-student guests.
I hate this new method. We used to just swipe our onecards and that was it. This new way isn't even an app, its just a website which is were they went wrong with this. If they were gonna go this route NIU should've kept the old red and black rewards app and integrated tickets into that. Now every game I have go through the hassle of finding this website, logging in just to get my ticket. What about all the people whose phones will be dead after 5+ hours of tailgating and snap-chatting? Or whenever there's a large crowd around the stadium NIU wifi is unusable and even data becomes really slow.
I guess the bright sides to this is NIU has a way to now text students to remind us there's a game tonight and reduce the number of students who swipe in just to pick up the free hat/use the bathroom and leave.
05-01-2019 03:43 PM
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pvk75 Offline
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Post: #6
RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 03:43 PM)dogdangit Wrote:  
(05-01-2019 03:18 PM)clcfball11 Wrote:  Also, I can't believe this didn't exist already before now. They really still had to trek to the Convo for tickets? Christ

Wrong, Students have to go to the Convo to pick up tickets if they purchased them for non-student guests.
I hate this new method. We used to just swipe our onecards and that was it. This new way isn't even an app, its just a website which is were they went wrong with this. If they were gonna go this route NIU should've kept the old red and black rewards app and integrated tickets into that. Now every game I have go through the hassle of finding this website, logging in just to get my ticket. What about all the people whose phones will be dead after 5+ hours of tailgating and snap-chatting? Or whenever there's a large crowd around the stadium NIU wifi is unusable and even data becomes really slow.
I guess the bright sides to this is NIU has a way to now text students to remind us there's a game tonight and reduce the number of students who swipe in just to pick up the free hat/use the bathroom and leave.

You are correct, and I apologize for the mis-use of "app" in the thread name. I read the release too fast. Changed to "website," altho it remains usable news. How usable/used is a matter of opinion. I wonder if this comes from looking for an inexpensive way to say "new and improved." Whether it proves so or not, we'll see this fall.

I think THammock & Co. reaching out to students, student groups around campus will hopefully have a bigger effect. Any thoughts on that?
(This post was last modified: 05-01-2019 04:07 PM by pvk75.)
05-01-2019 04:01 PM
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HawaiiToNIU Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
Back in my day (2006 - 2011), the school literally did everything they could to put butts in seats. If you lived in the dorms, they would put tickets into your mailbox, we still didn't sell out but attendance was decent (Garrett Wolfe years). Walking back from or to class on Lucinda, you would end up wandering into at least 3 ticket tables run by the students giving out as many tickets as you'd ask for. In the College of Business, another booth was set up where they would also be handing out tickets. On top of all of that, they would always be handing out shirts, burritos, foam fingers, poms, and thunderstix. Again, we never sold out but attendance to the games was good. This goes beyond athletics, because we were always pretty damn good and they did their part to get kids to come to the games. But there are many more problems now....

1.Weeknight games
2.Generation Z just doesn't care about football as much...this is a nationwide thing
3.Lower Attendance at the school (it's down to 17,169 as of Fall 2018)
4.Kids commute home for the weekend
05-01-2019 04:06 PM
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pvk75 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 04:06 PM)HawaiiToNIU Wrote:  Back in my day (2006 - 2011), the school literally did everything they could to put butts in seats. If you lived in the dorms, they would put tickets into your mailbox, we still didn't sell out but attendance was decent (Garrett Wolfe years). Walking back from or to class on Lucinda, you would end up wandering into at least 3 ticket tables run by the students giving out as many tickets as you'd ask for. In the College of Business, another booth was set up where they would also be handing out tickets. On top of all of that, they would always be handing out shirts, burritos, foam fingers, poms, and thunderstix. Again, we never sold out but attendance to the games was good. This goes beyond athletics, because we were always pretty damn good and they did their part to get kids to come to the games. But there are many more problems now....

1.Weeknight games
2.Generation Z just doesn't care about football as much...this is a nationwide thing
3.Lower Attendance at the school (it's down to 17,169 as of Fall 2018)
4.Kids commute home for the weekend

On your #4, I was a student in the early to mid-70s, and the "suitcase school" mentality was rampant then. Enrollment around the mid-20,000s but the campus seemed half empty on weekends. Student attendance always seemed good then too. Your points 1-2-3 have more impact, imo.
(This post was last modified: 05-01-2019 05:43 PM by pvk75.)
05-01-2019 04:11 PM
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HawaiiToNIU Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 04:11 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  
(05-01-2019 04:06 PM)HawaiiToNIU Wrote:  Back in my day (2006 - 2011), the school literally did everything they could to put butts in seats. If you lived in the dorms, they would put tickets into your mailbox, we still didn't sell out but attendance was decent (Garrett Wolfe years). Walking back from or to class on Lucinda, you would end up wandering into at least 3 ticket tables run by the students giving out as many tickets as you'd ask for. In the College of Business, another booth was set up where they would also be handing out tickets. On top of all of that, they would always be handing out shirts, burritos, foam fingers, poms, and thunderstix. Again, we never sold out but attendance to the games was good. This goes beyond athletics, because we were always pretty damn good and they did their part to get kids to come to the games. But there are many more problems now....

1.Weeknight games
2.Generation Z just doesn't care about football as much...this is a nationwide thing
3.Lower Attendance at the school (it's down to 17,169 as of Fall 2018)
4.Kids commute home for the weekend

On your #4, I was a student in the early to mid-70s, and the "suitcase school" mentality was rampant then. Enrollemnt around the mid-20,000s but the campus seemed half empty on weekends. Student attendance always seemed good then too. Your points 1-2-3 have more impact, imo.

To be fair....most of us kids went to Taco Bell at halftime

Lukulo's is closed
05-01-2019 04:13 PM
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dogdangit Offline
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Post: #10
RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 04:06 PM)HawaiiToNIU Wrote:  Back in my day (2006 - 2011), the school literally did everything they could to put butts in seats. If you lived in the dorms, they would put tickets into your mailbox, we still didn't sell out but attendance was decent (Garrett Wolfe years). Walking back from or to class on Lucinda, you would end up wandering into at least 3 ticket tables run by the students giving out as many tickets as you'd ask for. In the College of Business, another booth was set up where they would also be handing out tickets. On top of all of that, they would always be handing out shirts, burritos, foam fingers, poms, and thunderstix. Again, we never sold out but attendance to the games was good. This goes beyond athletics, because we were always pretty damn good and they did their part to get kids to come to the games. But there are many more problems now....

1.Weeknight games
2.Generation Z just doesn't care about football as much...this is a nationwide thing
3.Lower Attendance at the school (it's down to 17,169 as of Fall 2018)
4.Kids commute home for the weekend

I'm also shocked to hear how much was done in the past to get students to the games. Obviously tickets aren't handed out anymore but there really isn't much being done on campus to create any excitement for students to go to games. NIU now only does one free hand out per year at football games and this year it was visors which I couldn't get because they only had around 3,000 and 1,000 of those went to the high school band kids.
But it isn't only an athletics problem, there's just a general problem of apathy on campus. SA voting this year had only 374 students vote total and nobody even ran for the Presidents position. The outgoing SA president and Lisa Freeman held a pizza with the presidents event where only 4 students showed up and not even the SA President showed up. There are many stories similar to this where really cool events and speakers are on campus and attendance is practically nothing. NIU as a university has a big problem with marketing, not just athletics.
If I had to add another problem to the list of problems, it would be

5. Commuter students in general
There is a huge number of commuters who drive to DeKalb and back 2 or 3 times a week just to go to class and then go back home. Thats why I don't think of NIU as a suitcase school, but more of a glorified 4 year community college. NIU has came out and said that they will try to raise enrollment by increasing the amount of students enrolled in online classes. If that happens, campus life would basically be extinct.
05-01-2019 04:51 PM
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niu1980 Offline
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Post: #11
RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-01-2019 03:43 PM)dogdangit Wrote:  
(05-01-2019 03:18 PM)clcfball11 Wrote:  Also, I can't believe this didn't exist already before now. They really still had to trek to the Convo for tickets? Christ

Wrong, Students have to go to the Convo to pick up tickets if they purchased them for non-student guests.
I hate this new method. We used to just swipe our onecards and that was it. This new way isn't even an app, its just a website which is were they went wrong with this. If they were gonna go this route NIU should've kept the old red and black rewards app and integrated tickets into that. Now every game I have go through the hassle of finding this website, logging in just to get my ticket. What about all the people whose phones will be dead after 5+ hours of tailgating and snap-chatting? Or whenever there's a large crowd around the stadium NIU wifi is unusable and even data becomes really slow.
I guess the bright sides to this is NIU has a way to now text students to remind us there's a game tonight and reduce the number of students who swipe in just to pick up the free hat/use the bathroom and leave.

You can still use your one card as well.
(This post was last modified: 05-03-2019 09:21 AM by niu1980.)
05-01-2019 05:07 PM
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pvk75 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
If I'm reading this right, the gist of all this is that we love the good old days, that hard-core fans hang on to them because the present sucks, that nothing the university or athletics does is going to work, that no one should try anything to see if it might work, that the new favorite sport is to just dump on everything because it all sucks anyway, and that we need to embrace the decline in attendance and diminishing revenues and just hope for the best, or the least of the worst.

Now I'm depressed. Nobody seems to even want some positives.

But, you know what?! Go Huskies! I refuse to quit. No matter what. Negativity just breeds more of the same.

That's my 2 cents, for what it's worth.
(This post was last modified: 05-02-2019 06:54 AM by pvk75.)
05-01-2019 05:53 PM
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klake87 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
At a some point there is no hope for getting student involvement. Students have so many other options and NIU football is not one of them. Even if you refunded their student fees if they attended every football game, you still would not move the needle. I know as an old fart, I enjoyed the total college experience, but students now couldn't care less.
05-02-2019 08:53 AM
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-02-2019 08:53 AM)klake87 Wrote:  At a some point there is no hope for getting student involvement. Students have so many other options and NIU football is not one of them. Even if you refunded their student fees if they attended every football game, you still would not move the needle. I know as an old fart, I enjoyed the total college experience, but students now couldn't care less.

It's possible that "the total college experience" means something different today than it did back when you (or, I for that matter) went to NIU. And, you can't really say one is better than the other based on what you remember or prefer. Kids today prefer different things today because they have options that we never dreamed of having.
05-02-2019 10:37 AM
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klake87 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-02-2019 10:37 AM)Big Red Wrote:  
(05-02-2019 08:53 AM)klake87 Wrote:  At a some point there is no hope for getting student involvement. Students have so many other options and NIU football is not one of them. Even if you refunded their student fees if they attended every football game, you still would not move the needle. I know as an old fart, I enjoyed the total college experience, but students now couldn't care less.

It's possible that "the total college experience" means something different today than it did back when you (or, I for that matter) went to NIU. And, you can't really say one is better than the other based on what you remember or prefer. Kids today prefer different things today because they have options that we never dreamed of having.
So then you agree with me. There is nothing NIU can do (except have Pop and Hip Hop stars perform during half time) to get students to games.
05-02-2019 10:52 AM
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pvk75 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
So add actually doing nothing to looking like doing nothing = giving up added to not giving a damn anyway.

How about a portable bandshell for a dj/local band for student tailgating? Saw a YouTube advertisement video, and those things are amazing. Already widely used at parks, fairs, swap meets, outdoor trade shows, etc. Get student rec board to find inexpensive dj, etc. Available for use elsewhere around campus, like the Convo parking lot for other events, and stored in campus vehicle garage. There's the open space north of the softball field and close to the rec center. Once you have one, you have it.

Or does NIU already have one and I just didn't know? How about a company that makes those as a sponsor, or local business(es)? Maybe the area hotspots for students (bars, fast food places, whatever) if there are any.

Do something real, visible. Don't just shuffle the deck chairs.
(This post was last modified: 05-02-2019 06:22 PM by pvk75.)
05-02-2019 06:10 PM
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HuskieJoe Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
We are a commuter school and commuters largely don’t stay on campus for evenings or come to campus on weekends. This has much less to do about NIU marketing and the reality of college sports at a commuter schools.

This is the story told by the last 5 NIU graduates who have started their careers at my place of employment.
(This post was last modified: 05-02-2019 07:12 PM by HuskieJoe.)
05-02-2019 07:11 PM
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pvk75 Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
Aware of it, and not ignoring reality. That's the same response I get from NIU students I have contact with. Not trying to beat a hopefully-not-quite-dead horse, but I was actually thinking a bit beyond student draw when I suggested a portable stage. And it was just one idea among a zillion out there, I'm sure. Maybe the wrong thread ... general marketing for Huskie athletics and campus events? Students don't stay students forever. Maybe a little marketing aimed at post-grads, community? Just trying to stay positive.

BTW, that's why I don't get too hot over the weekday night games, except they're inconvenient for working people. It recognizes reality and goes for TV exposure and revenue.

Also maybe by now this thread IS beating a dead horse, at least for me. At the start, just thought it worth a mention.
05-02-2019 07:28 PM
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JoeNovak Offline
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RE: New website for student tickets, guest sales
(05-02-2019 06:10 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  So add actually doing nothing to looking like doing nothing = giving up added to not giving a damn anyway.

How about a portable bandshell for a dj/local band for student tailgating? Saw a YouTube advertisement video, and those things are amazing. Already widely used at parks, fairs, swap meets, outdoor trade shows, etc. Get student rec board to find inexpensive dj, etc. Available for use elsewhere around campus, like the Convo parking lot for other events, and stored in campus vehicle garage. There's the open space north of the softball field and close to the rec center. Once you have one, you have it.

Or does NIU already have one and I just didn't know? How about a company that makes those as a sponsor, or local business(es)? Maybe the area hotspots for students (bars, fast food places, whatever) if there are any.

Do something real, visible. Don't just shuffle the deck chairs.

I think Coach Hammock has been in touch with a DJ that plays at practices and even the spring game. Maybe he will be more involved during the season? And how about DJ Dan?? Any former Greeks who went to niu in the late 2000s will tell you he will play all day for a case of Busch lite and a gallon of gas...oh and he’s taking requests lol. But if we are trying to attract recent grads, how about having a legit beer fest at the tailgate and invite several area breweries? I’d be so in for that.
05-02-2019 09:58 PM
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