This puts a damper on things. 

You'd think they would want to sell out all games and provide a home court advantage. I know you're all going to say that Crisler was not loud during Purdue but there were times when the crowd got into it.

I know I was screaming like a maniac especially in the second half.

Inevitable I suppose.  Still don't like it.  Brian was correct when he said people will be priced out of the tickets.  $7500?  Who but the very wealthy are going to pay that much for tickets?

At what point, especially with the economy in the state of Michigan, do they price seats so high that people stop showing up?

If he jacks the prices at Crisler does that mean he will lower them at The Big House?

/s

With two children in day care, I can't really justify the cost of attending men's basketball or football games, especially if I want to take the  family. During the winter though, we get to as many non-revenue games as feasible. The ease with which you can find a competive sporting event to watch is one of the things that make Ann Arbor a great town.

While I am annoyed by the image of Brandon sitting in his office contemplating supply and demand curves I wonder if this mentality maintains the viability of non-revenue sports?  It may, but the existence of those sports pre-dates Brandon's PSD shenanagins by a long shot.

I think most Michigan grads can afford a $50 dollar seat license fee.  Way too much attention is being given to the $7,500 dollar number - those are seats most of us would never have had a chance to sit in at any point in our lives anyways. 

PSD's are for season tickets. There likely won't be a big difference in season tickets sold next year vs this year. A better question for the average fan is, how much will single ticket prices increase by? While I dislike the PSD jack, if you can't afford $50 per season, how can you afford tickets at all?

A bigger issue is parking. I love the walk to football games but the February walk from Pioneer is no good. It's a big reason for late arrivals and seems to be a problem deserving much more attention.

Ohio went through this when they opened the Schottenstein Center.  The courtside seats were too expensive for "real fans" to afford and the students were moved back from the court, thus hurting the home court advantage.  I know they are working on moving some of the student sections around to help.  This is the way college basketball is going.  I'm amazed what Toledo did with Savage Hall.  They put a mint into private suites and luxury boxes for donors and businesses.

Capital improvements cost money, so there's no shame in adjusting ticket prices to account for expenses.  Sounds like the AD will ding the seats that are regularly sold out.  Yeah, inevitable given the success of the program as of late.

It's about money... tradition, honoring fans who live and die for their teams over those that donate- that sadly has no place if a program wants to be a bigtime program

Nothing creates an awesome home-court advantage better than filling half the lower bowl with Thurston Howell III.

There are some decent lower bowl seats with rather minimal PSDs. I sit in the corner near the Michigan bench and those seats will only cost $50 a seat next year. The $7500 tickets are for luxury boxes. For $2500 you can sit at mid court and have access to a club area with your own bathrooms and concession areas. 

My number one complaint against Brandon (on a list of maybe 1 or 2 things), had been he just loves money too much. Not to say that he is greedy, but his #1 objective has been to make money for the athletic department. In a department where the final product is kids who don't get paid, it would be nice to see more given back. I don't care how nice the 2050 Big House renovations are if I can't afford tickets to go see it.

Crisler is a second tier atmosphere when compared to OSU, MSU, IU, PU, even Illinois. For the big games, yeah it gets wild in there, but for a normal Big Ten game against a conference basement dweller, its pretty dead. The thing is, whenever Michigan comes to town, it's usually a big deal, even if we aren't that good. It's just the name, I mean, we're Michigan fergodsakes.

I wonder about this.  I'll learn the details about specific seats and PSD prices soon enough, but I know a few season ticket holders who have really prime seats in the first few rows near center court.  many of them are former basketball team and football team members, loyal Victors Club and Presidents Club members, who have given a lot to the University over the years.  They mostly all have football tickets, and are paying seat donations for football already.

Brandon can say, if he chooses; This is how we do things; we charge more for prime seats and that is how we fund facilities improvements.  The marketplace will rule; we are going to charge what the market will bear, for the good of the program.

So I have two large levels of doubt about all of this.  One is that I wonder how much Brandon will be able to jack up basketball PSD's.  Will he actually find people to pay?  I have real doubts.  I think Brandon is going to drive out a lot of some of the most loyal Michigan fans in existence.  Who will he find, who will actually pay?  We'll see.

The second is what will be lost, outside of the arena, when you lose all of the older, extremely loyal fans who have had season tickets for many decades, some of them since Crisler was built (I know a few of those people).  They support the University and other teams, in a wide variety of ways, apart from the basketball program through tickets.