(01-16-2019 02:18 AM)The Grape King Wrote:  No idea how this thread turned into trashing our athletics. I've always been a supporter of Drexel and city basketball and never understand things like this.

Anyway. I don't know how things have gone attendance wise for Drexel this year, but I'm sure Isabell leaving a few months after this piece didn't help. But you guys can start by lowering ticket prices. I went to the Quinnipiac game last year and the cheapest ticket was $20. I spent the same to see #1 Villanova a week or two earlier at Liacouras Center with 10,000 people in the building. I like to occasionally hit the other gyms in philly, but I'm not going back to the DAC to see you guys play Elon for $20. I can go up to La Salle and see Davidson or VCU for half that, or spend the same to see a Michigan or Indiana at Rutgers. Rider tickets are $10 and they sell that place out most nights, it's a fantastic atmosphere. I'm not going to spend $20 to see Drexel just for the goodwill.

I really do support your program and want to see it thrive. I actually made it into Matthews a few weeks ago and sat behind your bench and cheered for Drexel. But it's a competitive college basketball market. You're not hosting Cincinnati or Xavier and you don't play at the Palestra (I'd easily drop $20 once or twice a year to see DI basketball at the Armory, too bad that's dead). Adjust the prices and hit the billboards. Every city team needs to work on its exposure.

Again, that's a fair point, especially coming from a cheap bastard like myself. I'm a season ticket holder so I pay significantly less than $20/game and get an even bigger discount on my second seat since I have kids who I take to the games.

The one issue that I have is that they don't seem to actually sell general admission tickets in the bleachers for less money.

Usually Drexel does offer a lot of ticket discounts. Alumni can get tickets at the box office for $15. They also seem to offer other various discounts as well. I think they used to sell on Groupon. They also offer flex packs of tickets for less than $20/ticket. Kids tickets are $10, and group tickets are significantly cheaper. Drexel also does not charge online ticket fees like Temple and Penn do, so that provides significant value to the ticket price.

The argument that Drexel might make is that the seats at the DAC as close as any in college basketball. While Drexel doesn't offer cheaper tickets, all of the chairback seats are premium seats. I know that you can't get seats as good as the seats at Drexel in any Philadelphia arenas for less than $20/ticket. Penn charges about that much to sit in 2nd level hard metal bleachers and a lot more to sit in chairbacks. Temple's cheaper seats are mostly in the upper deck. LaSalle charges at least $20 to sit in their POS of an arena. St. Joe's tickets are expensive too and Hagan arena is mostly bleachers. I'll leave Villanova out of this conversation altogether.

I also think that Drexel's argument is that if the team starts winning, seats will fill up, and nobody will care about paying $20/ticket.