New Dynamic Pricing Model for Football Tickets
ESPN has an article about Michigan utlizing a new ticket pricing model this fall to reflect market prices, similar to a lot of professional markets. Interesting since expected prices for the ND game are $195 and $175 for Ohio. This affects single game tickets only.
Buy early.
Link to article http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9430582/michigan-sets-dynamic-ticket-prices-based-supply
wasn't this posted and thoroughly discussed last week?
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ticket-packages-announced-2013-nd-game-not-…
Turns out correct. Though the thread title did not contain the "Dynamic" portion of the story - I thought it was strange when I didn't notice a thread on this last week, but had just missed this one.
Michigan (or the Brandon administration) cares not about lower-income M fans or recent alums.
I can't believe I'm getting to the point where I am hoping there is noticable drops in tickets purchased/attendance so that Dave Brandon understands that Michigan is not immune to the drastic decrease in college football attendance that is happening across the country.
Which will be nice in maybe 5 years when I can even think about affording football tickets as a non-student.
But I don't know any of my friends that are even thinking about season tickets and I'm becoming less and less of a "recent" alum.
EDIT: And just to clarify, I don't want the stadium to not fill. I want Brandon to recognize the very real possibility before it happens. However, I expect that's what it will take before Brandon recognizes he's milking the cows dry.
For a 2012 grad, how many student loan payments does $500 cover? How much rent? And you get nothing for that $500 other than the right to buy football tickets. The tickets themselves make this, what, about a grand's worth of investment?
My parents first bought their season tickets when they were ~23-year-old recent grads in the mid-70s. Looking at my financial situation as an alum of the mid-2000s, I don't know how I could have done the same thing. And that's a shame.
You could always sell a kidney.
And if the ticket prices were dramatically cheaper, then a zillion (yes, a zillion) more people would be interested in them and you probably still wouldn't have any because whatever process they used to allocate them would likely have you at a disadvantage.
But there'd be a chance. I'm ok with losing out on a lotto much more than I am with not affording tickets at all.
I can understand that, but since your scenario now presumes the AD doesn't generate revenue (or nearly as much of it), are you hoping that Michigan remains competitive, or does this scenario also assume all of college football is going to follow suit and abandon their revenue?
Not really. You're assuming this is an all-or-nothing idea.
There's no reason the athletic department cannot allocate a specific, small portion of tickets (like, oh, i don't know, single game endzone tickets) to be sold to recent (~5 years) alums at regular list price.* I cannot possibly imagine a reason they cannot do this.
You make your future donation base happy and keep them involved while possibly taking a hit on your dynamic price gouging model.
All the other tickets and their obscene PSD/license fees/whatever are still there to bring in the money while young alums stay involved and can still afford to buy tickets while paying off their $XXk in student loans.
Georgia does something similar but alots a portion of the student section for young alums to buy tickets at non-student list prices.
*Young alums will be more likely to buy endzone singletons than most because they might just sneak over to the student section anyway
alums should get priority points for paying student loan interest :)
in the Big House AND increase in concession price to $4 a bottle. As shameless a money grab as you'll find.
-
Prohibited Items
All bags (including purses)
All bottles (including all types of water bottles)
Containers of any kind (including coolers, thermoses, cups, cans, flasks)
Aerosol and spray cans
Umbrellas and seat backs
Flags and flagpoles
Alcoholic beverages
Food of any kind
Apparel or signage displaying profane or abusive language
Video cameras and tripods
Strollers
Projectile toys (including footballs, Frisbees and beach balls)
Weapons
I can see you haven't been to a game in a while.
No it is not a new rule. Has been in place for a couple years. No water. No food. No Bags.
clearly you haven't heard of a thing called sleeves or pockets. It's incredibly easy to get at least one or two bottles in per person.
Not when there are a bunch of security folk standing 20 feet from the gate watching everyone who goes by, who managed to catch my pocketed water bottle every single time before I decided it wasn't worth it anymore.
There are still water fountains in the stadium. Here's what I do:
Buy one of those 1L Aquafina bottles.
Empty it.
Flatten it as much as you can.
Put it inside your belt on your back and put your shirt and jersey over it. Totally unnoticable.
Refill inside the stadium.
but no one's gonna question you about the dump in your pants
but no one's gonna question you about the dump in your pants
Think about a bit more. If you want to do it, its not terribly hard. For example, my friends and I got about 200 copies of the Daily into the Big Chill and about 500 sheets of the Hockey chants. We covered nearly an entire section with newspaper during the roster announcements.
Cool story, bro.
The fact of the matter is the policy is nothing more than a money-grab, and they do attempt to rather aggressively enforce it.
I can see how sealed water bottles are a bit more of a smuggling risk, but even then, so is letting a bajillion people into a closed space.
If it was really about security, water bottles inside the stadium would be a buck or so, just like they are everywhere else.
Should we really have to resort to smuggling?
for tickets beyond which sales will start declining. I've always thought that's a foolish notion, although I have no desire to see the stadium at less-than-capacity.
The amount of money that people have to fork out for season tickets is simply astounding, and the cost surpassed what I am willing to pay a number of years ago, especially when they went to the seat licenses crap. Fans like me are clearly not a concern for Brandon.
I'm with you on this. It seems like this is just an attempt to say that we'd might as well charge what people will pay rather than set the price too high (and leave tickets unsold) or too low (and let a bunch of asshole scalpers buy them up, contribute nothing, and make a profit).
Prices will not drop below the season per ticket price of $65. People looking for tickets through the ticket office will get charged more than double face value for premium games with only a moderate savings for Baby Seal U.
they wouldn"t go below the set season ticket price which I believe is $65. If you believe that tickets for the "big games" are not going to get sold I have an ocean front lot in Arizona I would like to sell you.
The thing that bothers me is that they could have given the chance for people to become 1st time season ticket holders and instead gave current season ticket holders the opportunity to buy more. Hopefully they track these extra tickets and if they end up on the secondary market someone has hell to pay.
Yup. They've sold season tickets to first timers who have donated above the trigger amount. That's why they proceeded to sell the leftovers to existing season ticket holders and then they are going to send the rest in ticket packs and singles (again, with priority to donors).
the 2014 schedule's already been announced and he didn't want to take a complete bath when the dynamics of his new pricing model bottomed out.
That only applies to unsold single-game seats, which has to be a tiny fraction of the seats in Michigan Stadium. It doesn't affect the cost of season tickets.
Bad time to be a ticket scalper...
So are we saying we're sick of capitalism?
Invisible hand of economics got you down? Have an ice cold Coca Cola*!
*pricing may change due to game day temperature
I have 8 tickets in the Maize section for the family.
Season ticket price = $455 x 8 = $3,640
Annual PSD = $350 x 8 = $2,800
Total = $6,440
It's definitely becoming quite an expensive pasttime.
With all due reproductive respect, 8 tickets to the county fair ain't gonna be cheap.
Maybe not take the whole Brady Bunch to the games and rotate? If you were buying 8 tickets, I don't think cost was a concern to be factored in.
What? No ticket for Alice? She's the only U of M alumnus amongst the lot.
The county fair in Wayne County, OH in Wooster ("Ohio's Foremost Agricultural Fair"):
General Admission: $3.00 Children 6 and under FREE
But a couple thousand less than your total because 80% of that PSD is tax deductible. There are other issues of cost including time, parking, gas, food, etc. But it's still worth it for me...
Yea, that sounds right. 80% of the PSD is deductible. Then I can deduct approximately 33% of that amount so it ends up to a savings of approximately $740 for 8 tickets (or a little less than $100 per ticket).