Big Chill Ticket Sales are Inflated
Apparently, Big Chill Ticket Sales are higher than they should be:
Dear Student Season Ticket Holder,
Thank you for purchasing a 2010 Student Football season ticket. We want to remind you that one ticket for The Big Chill at the Big House is automatically included with every football and hockey student season ticket.
You ordered one extra ticket for The Big Chill at the Big House, and we would like to confirm that you want two tickets to this historic event (three tickets if you also ordered a student hockey season ticket).
If you ordered this extra ticket in error, please do the following before Friday May 21 to cancel this extra ticket and receive a $10 refund:
They weren't exactly clear when they said that tickets were included with football season tickets. Students, get your refunds.
Technically they are not inflated. Those are the true ticket sale numbers. However, that doesn't change that the student ticket application for football and hockey was very ambiguous and borderline deceptive.
Let me just clarify this.
If you order football season tickets, you essentially bought two tickets to the Big Chill. Another ticket to the Big Chill was ordered for you if you ordered hockey season tickets?
So, if you ordered both football and hockey, you got 3 tickets to the Big Chill? Or 2?
One ticket was automatically included in your (student) football and hockey pacakges. If you ordered any more, they were in addition to those already given.
Ex. Hockey + football + 1 Big Chill ticket = 3 tickets
If you got football student season tix or hockey football season tix, you got a ticket. So if you got both, you get two tickets automatically.
If you are a student and you buy either Football or Hockey season tickets you get one free ticket to the Big Chill. If you buy Football and Hockey season tickets you get one free ticket for each purchase. Pretty simple really, I wonder if this really has inflated the ticket count? I guess it would depend on how many students made the mistake of ordering a Big Chill ticket along with ordering season tickets.
This is the wording from the email I got a while back from the ticket office:
"A ticket for this game will be included in both the football and hockey student season ticket packages for $5 each. Students may buy additional tickets to this event for $10 each when purchasing season tickets. Students who purchase both a football and hockey season ticket will receive a total of two tickets to this event."
Sounds like the $5 was built into the price of the ticket packages, and if you got both hockey and football, you get two tickets.
I'm not sure how many people actually bought an extra one by mistake since I think they made it clear that one come with the season tickets.
It appears that they either:
A) Intentionally made the wording when ordering tickets difficult to understand in order to increase ticket sales (I had multiple friends not realize a ticket was included and ended up buying another) and now are trying to get those tickets back because sales have been so strong and they can sell them to the general public at a higher price.
or...
B) Whoever made the football ticket appliciation is just retarded and made it confusing as hell without realizing it.
I just hope the student section doesn't look absolutely deserted as a result of this, but I have a feeling it will.
I wonder how many students that bought football tickets were never planning on coming to The Big Chill anyway. If the weather is cold, I could see many staying home.
I think there is one other option:
The students didn't read the entire entry form before filling it out. I am an alumnus so I never saw the form but my guess as it may have been confusing if you read everything you could have probably figured it out.
I have a ticket to the Big Chill!!!! Kick decent amounts of ass.
The wording was really terrible on the order form, and I realized a few days later that I ended up with an extra ticket.. Hopefully we can still hit 100,000+ with this minor setback.
I think that chances of hitting 100,000 actually increase because of this. The more tickets that are put into the hands of the general public the better. The real problem though is the included ticket with football packages. This event will not be a record setter on the strength of the students. Sadly, there is a large percentage of the student section fo football games that coudl not care less about the actually game. While the prospect of having another 'football saturday' like atmosphere could entice some of them to go (read: get shit faced and stumble in after the first period), I think the cold weather will turn many of that group off. Then again, come game day there will probably be many dirt cheap or free tickets available for anyone willing to enter a pre-game on State St.
Whatever, now I can just take more CHICKS
Those tickets probably find their way into the hands of a good number of Sparty partisans. Given their pathetic turnout for the CCHA playoffs, though, one has to wonder just how big the Spartan attendance will be.
When I ordered my hockey and football tickets, I understood very well that I was getting two tickets as a result. I assume that the idea is to rope the football-only students into the event, but of course, not giving them out with hockey tickets would be just silly.
If you're buying both sets, it does stick you with two, but I thought that was made very clear when I ordered them (Not like I had a choice anyhow). Its not exactly hard to get get rid of the extra ticket(s), either. I'm sure we all know someone who'd love to go, and I'm sure football-only students who don't want to go (Heaven forbid) will find a buddy to ditch their ticket to as well. I'm giving my spare to my dad.
I understood it as well.
I think it was a little confusing. I know I knew that I was getting a free ticket with my football tickets, but I had to read very carefully a couple times to figure that out. It certainly was not explained as clearly as it could have.
My girlfriend made the mistake and bought an extra. I'd bet somewhere around half of people made this mistake, so it could be seriously inflated (5-10K extra would be my guess).