I thought that this subject could use its own thread since there is a big change in the way that W&M is pricing football season tickets in 2022. I have had 3 season tickets for a number of years now and my tickets have been in the chairback section of Section 103 since the Zable renovations were completed. Last year my tickets cost $200 a piece and I also had to pay $250/seat for the Scholarship Seat Contribution. So in total last year I paid $600 for tickets and $750 in Scholarship Seat Contributions with the latter contribution counting towards my annual giving to the Tribe Club.

For 2022, in order to "provide a simplified buying experience for existing season ticket holders" the Athletic Department has gone to an "All In" approach. In other words, they are no longer invoicing for the ticket and the Scholarship Seat Contribution separately but instead have combined the two components into one ticket price. In my case, the ticket that cost me $450 ($200 + $250) last year will cost me $525, this year, the same amount that is being charged for a chairback seat in the middle Section 104. And......there is also one additional change that the Athletics Department is promoting. Tickets in these sections are ONLY BEING SOLD AS A SEASON TICKET!! So if you want to purchase a ticket for an individual game in these sections this year, individual game tickets WILL NOT be available this year. In other words, the seat goes empty all year if it is not purchased by a season ticket holder.

Do not get me wrong. I am not complaining about having to pay $525 this year for a ticket that cost me a combined cost of $450 last year, as the difference is going to a good cause. In fact, I was already going to scale back to two season tickets this year because my daughter is grown and has not come to a game in two years. Indeed, I was able to stay on my same row and move my remaining two seats to 50 yard line seats in Section 104.

What instead has got me agitated is the conversation that I had with the ticket office representative who called me about my seats. I told him that I was fine with the "All In" concept but that I wanted to know if a portion of what I was paying was still going to count towards my annual giving. His answer was NO!! So I said, "You have more than doubled the price of my ticket and not one dollar is going towards my annual giving?" and he said that was correct!! When I asked why, he said that the new administration concluded that they were not following the tax law implemented a few years ago when they decided to have ticket holders have to pay a separate fee in order to be able to purchase a season ticket and they had to clean up the process.

His answer was bull @#$%, and I told him so. When the tax laws were changed several years ago, the Athletic Department changed accordingly. The seat license became a NON Deductible contribution that you made because you were getting something for your contribution; the right to purchase a season ticket. Most of us complained mightily at the time, not because the contribution was deemed to not be deductible for IRS purposes but because at first it appeared that the licenses were not going to count towards annual giving. Eventually, administration came to their senses and said that the seat licenses would be combined with any "deductible" contributions that you made to the Tribe Club in order to determine your total combined giving for the year. If the ticket office representative is correct, we are back to where we were a few years ago that made a bunch of us very upset.

To blame the above on the tax law is just plain misleading and certainly not transparent. The seat licenses/scholarship seat contribution was already a non deductible contribution so the IRS could not care less that you got something for this particular contribution. The only thing that remotely muddies the water here is that if the license, when combined with other tax deductible contributions, gets you to a combined giving level that entitles you to parking passes for football and basketball, then maybe that calls into question if your ENTIRE deductible contribution is really deductible under current IRS code. If that is what is giving the athletic department heartburn, just allow us to choose an option that no part of our contribution is tax deductible.

Thanks for my opportunity to vent.

My cost for eight tickets this year compared to last year increased 20% or $600.
I thought 20% was a bit extreme.

Last year the football license fee was also credited toward your basketball license fee.
With this new pricing policy applied to both football and basketball, it appears they
will sock it to us twice and we will lose the benefit of the credit from football to basketball.

Will this policy help fill all of the empty green seats around me and the empty silver seats below me?

(04-15-2022 10:34 AM)DSL Wrote:  My cost for eight tickets this year compared to last year increased 20% or $600.
I thought 20% was a bit extreme.

Last year the football license fee was also credited toward your basketball license fee.
With this new pricing policy applied to both football and basketball, it appears they
will sock it to us twice and we will lose the benefit of the credit from football to basketball.

Will this policy help fill all of the empty green seats around me and the empty silver seats below me?

Thanks for bringing up additional concerns that I have and issues (basketball) that I did not even bother bringing up with the representative that called me.

Is there anyone on these boards with eyes on this? As someone who is effectively being priced out of season tickets, it feels like the athletic department is actually hurting revenue with these policies. If I'm wrong I'll just suck it up and deal with it but the football season ticket pricing has seemed like it's been getting more lose-lose year over year now.

(04-15-2022 10:05 AM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  I thought that this subject could use its own thread since there is a big change in the way that W&M is pricing football season tickets in 2022. I have had 3 season tickets for a number of years now and my tickets have been in the chairback section of Section 103 since the Zable renovations were completed. Last year my tickets cost $200 a piece and I also had to pay $250/seat for the Scholarship Seat Contribution. So in total last year I paid $600 for tickets and $750 in Scholarship Seat Contributions with the latter contribution counting towards my annual giving to the Tribe Club.

For 2022, in order to "provide a simplified buying experience for existing season ticket holders" the Athletic Department has gone to an "All In" approach. In other words, they are no longer invoicing for the ticket and the Scholarship Seat Contribution separately but instead have combined the two components into one ticket price. In my case, the ticket that cost me $450 ($200 + $250) last year will cost me $525, this year, the same amount that is being charged for a chairback seat in the middle Section 104. And......there is also one additional change that the Athletics Department is promoting. Tickets in these sections are ONLY BEING SOLD AS A SEASON TICKET!! So if you want to purchase a ticket for an individual game in these sections this year, individual game tickets WILL NOT be available this year. In other words, the seat goes empty all year if it is not purchased by a season ticket holder.

Do not get me wrong. I am not complaining about having to pay $525 this year for a ticket that cost me a combined cost of $450 last year, as the difference is going to a good cause. In fact, I was already going to scale back to two season tickets this year because my daughter is grown and has not come to a game in two years. Indeed, I was able to stay on my same row and move my remaining two seats to 50 yard line seats in Section 104.

What instead has got me agitated is the conversation that I had with the ticket office representative who called me about my seats. I told him that I was fine with the "All In" concept but that I wanted to know if a portion of what I was paying was still going to count towards my annual giving. His answer was NO!! So I said, "You have more than doubled the price of my ticket and not one dollar is going towards my annual giving?" and he said that was correct!! When I asked why, he said that the new administration concluded that they were not following the tax law implemented a few years ago when they decided to have ticket holders have to pay a separate fee in order to be able to purchase a season ticket and they had to clean up the process.

His answer was bull @#$%, and I told him so. When the tax laws were changed several years ago, the Athletic Department changed accordingly. The seat license became a NON Deductible contribution that you made because you were getting something for your contribution; the right to purchase a season ticket. Most of us complained mightily at the time, not because the contribution was deemed to not be deductible for IRS purposes but because at first it appeared that the licenses were not going to count towards annual giving. Eventually, administration came to their senses and said that the seat licenses would be combined with any "deductible" contributions that you made to the Tribe Club in order to determine your total combined giving for the year. If the ticket office representative is correct, we are back to where we were a few years ago that made a bunch of us very upset.

To blame the above on the tax law is just plain misleading and certainly not transparent. The seat licenses/scholarship seat contribution was already a non deductible contribution so the IRS could not care less that you got something for this particular contribution. The only thing that remotely muddies the water here is that if the license, when combined with other tax deductible contributions, gets you to a combined giving level that entitles you to parking passes for football and basketball, then maybe that calls into question if your ENTIRE deductible contribution is really deductible under current IRS code. If that is what is giving the athletic department heartburn, just allow us to choose an option that no part of our contribution is tax deductible.

Thanks for my opportunity to vent.

I had a similar conversation, but came away with a different impression. Given other goings on under the previous AD, it didn't surprise me that our previous policy may have been generously described as operating in a legal gray area. My impression is that Mann came in and had to overhaul many things to get into actual compliance rather than "probably compliant", and this is one of them. FWIW, I think that my overall ticket costs went down but my overall required costs including necessary donations might go up, similar to 75's experience. In my case, I think I was already covering the required donations separately, so unless I increase my donations my annual costs for football and basketball will go down. I know that's not the case for everyone though.

I do want to stress that *in my opinion* (not stated by the representative I talked to) one of the goals of the new policies is to simplify everything on the administration side in order to be able to more easily manage with fewer staff. Given that I'm not entirely sure what my total costs were before, or what counted for what, I think this is a worthwhile effort that will have long-term benefits.