Review by Julie Fox in KIN 435 (section 1)
Many college football teams are finding themselves in difficult positions now that it is bowl season again. Virginia and Virginia Tech are two of the many ACC schools struggling to sell all of their allotted tickets. According to this article, Tech had only sold about 53% of their ticket allotment to the 2012 Sugar Bowl game and Virginia was expected to fall at least 4,000 tickets short of their allotment to the 2012 Chik-fil-A bowl. The problem with the decline in ticket sales is that the school and the ACC Conference are responsible for the unsold tickets. Tech was expected to receive its largest-ever bowl payout as a result from being in the bowl game. Due to the unsold tickets, Tech will not receive nearly as large payout as expected.
Virginia Tech’s reputation was on the line for this bowl game. Tech was selected to play in the game because of their reputation as having a large fan base that travels well. The school was expected to fill a lot of seats and a lot of hotel rooms, but found themselves failing. Head Coach Frank Beamer transformed himself into a salesman, pleading with students at halftime of a men’s basketball game to buy their bowl game tickets through the school.
The problem lies within the secondary ticket market. The secondary ticket market used to consist of people selling tickets on corners outside of stadiums. Now people can go online and buy better, cheaper tickets. StubHub listed more than 7,000 available tickets for the Sugar Bowl and 4,000 for the Chik-fil-A bowl. To fix this problem, Tech needed to implement some sort of incentive for students and fans to buy their tickets through the school. Why should students buy a random ticket in the nose-bleed section through Tech, when they could buy their ticket on Stubhub and pick their own seat? They needed some sort of program where if fans bought their ticket through the school, they got a discounted price on transportation to the game. While it is understandable that the ACC has rules about ticket allotments, it might be time for them to realize that secondary ticket markets are becoming the primary source of ticket sales. It is unfair to put so much financial burden on the schools when it is constantly getting harder for them to sell tickets. I feel a good solution would be to lower the ticket allotment to each school and put more tickets for sale on websites such as StubHub where they ultimately would make more of a profit.
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Review by Bekah Jarzombek in KIN 435 (section 1)
For the 2012 Bowl Championship Series, ACC schools were feeling the pressure to meet ticket sales numbers. The secondary ticket market was stealing fan’s business by providing lower ticket prices and convenience. Specifically, as of December 12, 2011, Virginia Tech had only sold 53% of the 17,500-ticket allotment for the Allstate Sugar Bowl on January 3, 2012. There was strong concern considering the game was less than a month away. Failure to sell tickets meant Virginia Tech and the ACC must pay for the unsold tickets. Less profit would be made off of the game. In desperation, Coach Beamer of Virginia Tech spoke at a men’s basketball game. He attempted to persuade students to buy their Sugar Bowl tickets from Virginia Tech. In addition, football players threw Mardi Gras beads into the crowd for extra motivation.
Other than the men’s’ basketball event, the article did not expand on ways Virginia Tech was attempting to fix the ticket problem. It seems the school and ACC should have recognized the problem earlier. With that said, resorting to Beamer’s begging session, three weeks before the game, was not an effective way to persuade students’ ticket decisions. The root of the problem is the Virginia Tech ticket prices are more expensive than companies such at StubHub. They can beg all they want, but a student is not going to buy a more expensive ticket if they know they can get it for a cheaper price. That doesn’t mean the fans lack passion for Virginia Tech. Their job is to go the game, and that is what they are doing…at a cheaper price.
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