(06-06-2019 12:56 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  

(06-05-2019 07:00 PM)Pervis_Griffith Wrote:  https://www.tallahassee.com/story/sports...300241001/


Found this interesting from the article -- lagging football season ticket sales hitting FSU for about $8.5 million from last year .... YIKES. It doesn't matter what the ACC Network does or doesn't do, if FSU can't sell football tickets, that's gonna effect their bottom line.


FSU's projected athletic department operating revenue is projected to see a significant drop for the 2019-20 fiscal year. That's due, in large part, to a significant decrease in ticket sales for football. FSU is expected to bring in just under $15 million after bringing in almost $23.5 million last year.

Coburn and his staff are looking for different ways to bring fans back to Doak Campbell Stadium.

"The two biggest things that we have to do is improve the value of the home schedule, and we’re working on that," Coburn said. "But the other is that we have to win. We all know that, and we will."

FSU's home schedule for the 2019 season lacks a lot of big name teams, which is part of the reason for the drop in ticket sales.

FSU has sold 24,000 season tickets for the upcoming season. After selling out its allotment (45,000 season tickets in the main seating bowl) in 2014 following the program's third national title, FSU’s season ticket sales have continued to fall. Last year’s mark totaled 32,194, not including an additional 6500 premium seats sold in the Dunlap Champions Club and stadium suites.

Winning cures a lot of what ails you. Cuse's new season ticket sales are up over 6700 at this point. They are shooting for 8-10,000 by September. Renewals are at an all time high also so they might only see a loss of about 1000 from existing STH'ers.

I know the FSU group sales rep gave my group of 50 tickets the best section ever for the game in Tallahassee this fall.

FSU needs to get back into the Top 10 to help their sales. Tallahassee is smallish metro and located several hours away from population centers of JAX, Orlando and Tampa Bay.

Bottomline the era of mega stadiums are coming to an end. Universities need to think long and hard before making capital expenditures of expanding stadiums. I think UCF is one of the few places that a 10K seat increase might make sense. ECU I think was idiotic to expand. Louisville I think took a huge risk to expand. I think they think it will be about 61,000 this year? right? The hard core fan will always be there but the bandwagon fan is very fickle. Do you build for the fickle bandwagon?

Do you build for the fickle band wagon?

Yes.

It is the ONLY way to grow your overall fan base. Converting the fickle, into the base.

Louisville football used to struggle to fill a 35,000 seat minor league baseball stadium. It held basketball season tix hostage in order to sell football season tix. Then it hired Howard Schnellenberger, who dreamed bigger than the program, and sell outs started occurring.

Then a 42,000 seat stadium was built and opened in 1998. The hardcore season ticket fan base grew to about 25,000 at the time.

Should U of L have stopped there?

NO .... if they had, we'd still be in the G5. Instead, over time, the fan base grew. The program continued to mature, and celebrated some land mark successes on the field.

A second deck was added, and a whole bunch of luxury suites were added, and the base of the hard core fans grew accordingly. To the point where there was demand for more premium, luxury seating. This demand was high enough to build yet a 3rd expansion. And all those luxury suite opportunities sold out quickly.

Selling out the luxury suites pays for the addition to the stadium. Filling those extra regular stadium seats will come in time, just like it always has.

60,000 seats for division I football, in a metro of over a million, is easily doable. We're not talking about 100,000 seats (or benches which is the reality in all those mega stadiums - and that in itself is a problem for those programs -- we have actual seats). I guarantee that I sell my extra Notre Dame game tickets for a premium this year. Ditto Clemson.

So .. do you build for the fickle fan base? If Louisville's football program growth since 1985 is any guide, it is a resounding YES. Yes you do.