Ohio State: Major ticket price increase for "premium" games
Ohio State football: Big hikes on some tickets likely
Tickets for the best Ohio State football games are likely to become much more expensive.
If recommendations by the university’s Athletic Council are adopted next week by the board of trustees, the cost of the best home games will rise much more than the 13 percent that so-called non-premier tickets are expected to go up.
The Athletic Council will ask that two games for the 2013, ’14, ’15 and ’17 seasons be designated as “premier” games. Those games’ costs will range from $110 to $150. The price of the 2016 premier game, undoubtedly against Michigan, will cost $175. That’s 21/2 times the cost of last year’s $70 ticket.Wisconsin and Penn State are the most likely targets for premium status in 2013.
Although this is Ohio St., it will probably affect Michigan fans in a couple ways. First, anyone directly purchasing tickets to the 2015 UM/OSU game will be paying a lot more. But mostly I see this as a start of a trend that probably come to Michigan once DB sees another opportunity for more revenue. Not that I necessarily think that's a bad thing - when tickets were going on secondary markets for several times face value, that is a lot of money the athletic department could use going to people outside the organization. It'll also help deter ticket brokers buying blocks of tickets to resell if the profits won't be as big, leaving more tickets to actual Michigan fans.
Stuff like this could really hurt season ticket sales though - why pay a ton of money for the crappy games when you're going to be paying almost as much for tickets to good games as the guy buying them on the street?
January 24th, 2013 at 12:23 PM ^
January 24th, 2013 at 1:42 PM ^
January 24th, 2013 at 12:25 PM ^
Mock if you will but the facts are that a ticket to a Buckeye's game is hard to come by and there is a robust secondary market out there for them far greater than in Michigan. Their stadium is not that much smaller than ours but for some reason tickets go at a premium to face value and nobody is giving any away like you'll see before some of our games.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:08 PM ^
Living in central OH during the 90's, it was amazing then, too, how vibrant the secondary market was. IIRC, recent alums at that time were allotted ticket opportunities for exactly ONE game per season, not of their choosing. Yikes! Full season ticket packages were doled out only to the big dollar donors of the day. Don't knowif that's changed since or not.
January 24th, 2013 at 12:27 PM ^
in the Big House to spoil the virtue of college football (which is somehow okay at Crisler and Yost). Seriously how much revenue could be generated with tastefully executed ad revenue?
Brandon probably would raise ticket prices the same amount though because until people say "no thanks" we will get increases to stay "competitive".
January 24th, 2013 at 2:19 PM ^
"Seriously how much revenue could be generated with tastefully executed ad revenue?"
You mean like a giant red Arby's logo all over the Big Chill signs/merchandise? I don't necessarily disagree with your point, I just have zero faith that's how it would be executed, and so I'll take the no advertising rule for as long as I can.
January 24th, 2013 at 12:36 PM ^
Asking their fans to choose between trailer mortgage payments and tickets is too much. I bet Ramzy "he who can type" among them will have something to say about his until he cows to the meme that such costs must be accepted.
January 24th, 2013 at 12:40 PM ^
that's been laying the golden eggs all these decades, and they're squeezing harder and harder in an effort to get it to lay bigger eggs. Eventually that goose is going to expire from a crushed trachea and interrupted blood flow to the brain.
January 24th, 2013 at 6:59 PM ^
Is it a leftover anti-Art Modell graphic?
January 24th, 2013 at 12:50 PM ^
paying a bunch for good games and cutting back on the delaware state games. Whenever I need to get rid of a ticket to one of those people are in shock at the face value ticket prices....
January 24th, 2013 at 1:00 PM ^
I don't think this matters too much at all, and is just a silly shell game of moving the dollars around, from the perspective of the school. OSU (and UM) attendance is dominated by season ticket holders. As a season ticket holder, I look at how much TOTAL I pay for the season ticket, and decide for myself if it is worth it to pay that much. The "face value" written on the ticket is not what I paid for it: I get a discount to that price, but then pay my PSD on top of it. The Face Value only serves me one purpose - as a starting point if I want to try and sell it to someone else. I assume OSU season ticket holders are similar.
If you buy individual game tickets to the premium games from the ticket office, this could affect you, but how many people are able to do that? You at least have to buy one of the mini-pack things, and you can then look at it the same way as a season ticket holder, looking at the total cost.
If you are NOT buying tickets from the ticket offices, you are just subject to the secondary market demand. And I don't think this changes that at all.
This WILL be a big impact to UM fans that buy the away tickets through the ticket office. Currently, for big games, those face value tickets are relatively cheap compared to the secondary market - but you get crappy seats in the visitor section. With this change it might be worh it to pay full secondary market prices and get a better seat.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
People over profit!
Actually, if the plan all along is to increase 'premium' game tickets significantly and then also reduce the crappy non-conference games, that's a bearable tradeoff.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:05 PM ^
January 24th, 2013 at 9:42 PM ^
Just wait until UTL v2.0 for cost.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
January 24th, 2013 at 2:15 PM ^
They should! This year the games COUNT!
January 24th, 2013 at 3:45 PM ^
I don't know that I'm nostalgic for the late 70s/early 80s, as much as going to a bunch of sporting events then sort of gave me an immutable mindset of how much tickets to sporting events *should* cost. Which in turn makes me scratch my head at how much people (including me) pay to go to the things in 2013.
Yes, I know, this isn't the right way to look at it, supply and demand yadda yadda, but if anything, with the RAWK and TV timeouts and all the rest, a game at Michigan Stadium is less appealing (particularly in relative terms) in 2012 than it was in, say, 1980, yet the real price of a ticket has at least doubled, and probably more. Pro sports are even worse. It's hard to see what people are paying for now that they weren't willing to pay for 30 years ago.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:53 PM ^
January 24th, 2013 at 9:27 PM ^
Ugh. Vulture culture.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:59 PM ^
January 26th, 2013 at 2:51 AM ^
January 26th, 2013 at 9:40 AM ^