Goodbye Dynamic Ticket Pricing!!
In another great move by our new AD!
"The 2015 tickets will not be dynamically priced, which is the practice of continually adjusting single-game ticket prices based on real-time market conditions with the biggest factor being fan demand and ticket scarcity. Individual tickets will go on sale in July."
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/033115aaa.html
Mod edit: Added ChuckieWoodson's table since it seemed like a waste to delete it. JGB.
| Game | Date | End Zone | Maize/Blue | Victors/Valiant |
| Oregon State | Sept. 12 | $80 | $90 | $100 |
| UNLV | Sept. 19 | $55 | $65 | $75 |
| Brigham Young | Sept. 26 | $80 | $90 | $100 |
| Northwestern (HC) | Oct. 10 | $75 | $85 | $95 |
| Michigan State | Oct. 17 | $95 | $105 | $115 |
| Rutgers | Nov. 7 | $65 | $75 | $85 |
| Ohio State | Nov. 28 | $95 | $105 | $115 |
You paid $800 because you probably thought that the tickets would get more expensive as the season went on. At the time, $800 was what people were paying and part of that was to "lock in" the "deal". Unfortunately, Michigan sucked and nobody wanted t watch the game and the prices plumeted.
In the past, if I had purchased a ticket for $200, and the team sucked, it was understood that at worst I could sell it for a minimal loss. The dynamic pricing forced loyal fans to gamble in a system they had no experience with. And after a sugar bowl victory, I was duped into thinking we might be good. Dynamic pricing essentially made me into a scalper.
Do you buy a car for the hope it will be reliable? Going to a football game is not the same as going to Vegas.
Now that the practice of dynamic pricing has ended, the cost of tickets to individual Michigan football games purchased through the Athletic Department is now fixed regardless of demand for any particular game. Michigan never had dynamic pricing for season tickets, just individual game sales, and that started back in 2013.
The total price for season tickets this season is $455 or $65 per game. This is $90 less than buying individual seats to all the games in the endzone, $160 less than in the Maize/Blue sections and $230 less than the Victors Valiants sections. In other words, you save more money on your season tickets versus buying individual tickets depending on what section your seats riside in 2015.
Per the MGoBlue.com website:
Donors who give $150 or more to the Michigan Athletics Annual Fund have the opportunity to purchase two (2) season tickets. Donors who give $500 or more are eligible to be offered four (4) season tickets.New season ticket holders will NOT pay a Preferred Seat Donation (PSD) in their first year. When you renew your season tickets in your second year, you will pay the PSD for your respective PSD tier.
So that means if you want to purchase at least two season tickets, you add on an additional $75 per ticket to the $455 you're paying and that gets the amount up to $530 out of pocket (it's actually less seeing that the donation is tax deductible, so we'll call this the gross price).
And FWIW, the seat cushion program still exists--$35 per seat before 1 August, $42 per seat before 20 August and $49 per seat anytime after that date. So if you want to add a cushion for your tooshy, then you're now at $560 gross price.
Then, of course, there are the Preferred Seat Donations. They go as follows:
$75 - Endzone
$200 - Blue
$350 - Maize
$475 - Valiant
$600 - Victors
So let's assume you bought two enzone tickets to each game individually. You would be paying the U-M Ticket Office $545 out of pocket.
If I have this correct, if you bought two season tickets in the endzone, you'd pay $455 for the list price plus donations of $150 for the opportunity to purchase two tickets and another $150 for the PSDs for those tickets (not in the first year though). That would be $755 out of pocket with $300 counting as donations for tax purposes.
If you break it down that way, what's the advantage of buying season tickets outside of the guarantee of having a seat for each game and a set price for the tickets? Assuming 80% of the donations are tax deductible ($240), then the out of pocket costs would still be around $515.
OTOH, buying single game tickets from the univesity isn't the only option now. You could find tickets for certain games (ex. UNLV) that might cost less on Stubhub than what you could get from the U-M ticket department. Interestingly enough, because Brandon upgraded the non-conference schedule and since the MSU and OSU games are at home, there may not be too many opportunities for that in 2015.
This really isn't an argument for or against dynamic pricing. We all know that move was made to cut down on the ticket revenue going to scalpers and secondary markets instead of the Athletic Department.
It's more a case of showing that despite the removal of the dynamic pricing dynamic, ticket prices are way up there and season tickets still come with built in, mandatory donations. I'ts nice that student ticket prices have gone down and current season ticket prices are holding from last year (with a better home schedule), but you still have to fund a $150M athletic department in one fashion or another. Conference distributions should increase a bit in 2015/6 and get a big jump in 2017 with the new tv contract--that'll offset some of the ticket revenue decreases. But U-M still has a $150M AD budget and the money is going to still have to come out of the pockets of the fans attending the games.