Why do we sell so many tickets to our opponents?

Submitted by ThadMattasagoblin on

This has been bugging me for a while, and I understand it's done as a courtesy gesture, but why do we give Ohio 15000-20000 tickets to the Big House when Ohio gives us a meager 5000 tickets to THE GAME in Columbus.  I've noticed the same thing with MSU with seeing a smaller block of Maize and Blue in their stadium than what they get in Ann Arbor.  Another example is Penn State.

Brown Bear

July 10th, 2012 at 11:32 PM ^

Big Ten rules is 3,000 allotted tickets but the university's have a gentlemens agreement on 4,000. That is the only info I could find online in a lazily tired google search. I think you are confusing allotment and season ticket holders selling off their tickets.

KevbosLastingLessons

July 10th, 2012 at 11:41 PM ^

Am I alone in thinking there was more red at the Nebraska game than Ohio this year? I understand the reason why, but just wondering if I'm the only one who noticed it.

Also, the comments in this thread are very hard to follow with all the deleting and editing. I must've missed something special. 

snarling wolverine

July 10th, 2012 at 11:48 PM ^

If Ohio has 15-20K in the stands, it's not our athletic department's doing.  It's due to some of our season-ticketholders selling off their tickets to Ohio fans.  The actual visitor's allotment is much smaller than that, just a few thousand.

Regarding MSU, what you write is not very accurate - we always have a lot of fans in Spartan Stadium, certainly no fewer than they get in Michigan Stadium.  My friend was at the 2009 game there, when we were 4-0 and MSU 1-3, and we had a huge contingent of fans that day - a ton of MSU fans had sold off their tickets to us that year.

Not many Michigan fans make it to Ohio Stadium, but it's not a ticket distribution issue.  It's more of a "Their fans are violent drunken thugs" issue.

NeilGoBlue

July 10th, 2012 at 11:51 PM ^

I can assure you your number is incorrect.  My understanding is that the number is 5000 between schools.  I know for a fact that Wisconsin only give us 3000 so we only give them that back. 

I have had disucssions about this with the AD and that is what they told me.

UofM626

July 11th, 2012 at 12:05 AM ^

Point on the thread. The blogger is stating why is it that we allocate so many tickets for the opponents when in fact they do not reciprocate the same courtesy. Regardless of how many people actually end up at the game, he is asking why we are so generous w tickets to the opposing team. I for one am all for giving less tickets made available for those schools...


Go Big Blue

snarling wolverine

July 11th, 2012 at 12:52 AM ^

People aren't missing the point.  The OP is mistaken.  We do not allot that many tickets to opposing teams.  He is assuming that just because a lot of Ohio fans made it in in 2009 and other years that the AD actually gave them all those seats.  

The "problem" is a simple matter of supply and demand - we have 109,901 tickets floating around for every game, more than any other school, so if demand from Michigan fans isn't that strong (which was the case before the '09 Ohio game, which people figured would be an embarrassment), supply for the visitors (via Stubhub) goes up.

Ball Hawk

July 11th, 2012 at 12:16 AM ^

So who got the ban hammer in this thread? It might have looked like the athletic department sold 20,000 visitor tickets during the Rodriguez era.

BeatOSU52

July 11th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^

There was a Sparty newby troll here last night that was basically spamming this thread with his non-sense and talking about walmart wolverines.  He could barely even type a full sentence. His posts were all of course voted down and disappeared in the middle of the night.  There is part of the confusion.

bluebyyou

July 11th, 2012 at 6:25 AM ^

We have a fair number of seriously old alums in my section who seem to show up for most of the early season games, but come November, their tickets are occupied by others, sometimes Michigan fans, sometimes not.  I have often wondered if they just don't like the cold weather.  For what it is worth, you often see a large number of MSU fans in attendance when they play in Ann Arbor..

LSAClassOf2000

July 11th, 2012 at 9:08 AM ^

If you read our ticket policy on away tickets (which I believe comes with the season tickets, but MGoBlue would have this up as well somewhere), you would get the sense that there is no way the allotments would be more than a few thousands seats pretty much anywhere you go. At my giving level, I am "offered" two tickets to ND, Nebraska and Ohio (I don't have any paperwork on it at my desk right now, so I will check it later), and no guarantee that said offer will be fulfilled in the end. It's likely very similar at other schools, I imagine. Actually, I think Ohio's ticket policy - based on a conversation with a colleague who is an alum of that school - is that students are offered one ticket as part of their package and that they basically tell alums and faculty to contact the host school.

MGoVoice

July 11th, 2012 at 12:17 PM ^

Again, sorry to hijack but anything football related helps us all through this dry period.

It's summer and things are sloooooooow, so FWIW here's a link to CFNs 2012 preseason bowl picks.

http://cfn.scout.com/2/1169806.html

It's done in 3 parts and spoiler alert...Michigan is tabbed for the Capital One Bowl.

Happy reading.

Please start a new post if worthy.  Thanks!

 

BoFan

July 11th, 2012 at 3:15 PM ^

i see a lot of posts about tickets here and elsewhere on the site. I only bought the student package the first year. Every other year we just bought them at the game (including when we were in HS) in the street or from another student that couldn't go. For ND and Ohio I had to buy a few more to resell to cover my cost. We did the same thing at away games.