Michigan Football season ticket demand down significantly?
Well, if you tried to getting season tickets in 2017 and were denied because of the large demand and the minimum number of priority points to be offered tickets set at 22, then you probably are happy if you re-applied in 2018.
According to MGoBlue, there has been a tremendous drop in season ticket interest-
Here is the 4-year table they updated
Season |
# of New Requests/Interest List Donations |
% Offered Season Tickets |
Minimum Points to be Offered Tickets |
2018 | 789 | 100% | 1.5 |
2017 | 1,024 | 39% | 22 |
2016 | 1,398 | 100% | 1.5 |
2015 | 2,093 | 100% | 1.5 |
Actually, they still let me in, but they stopped doing the vigorous body cavity searches. I mean, what's the point of going to a stadium if you're not going to get a good, hard, DEEP body cavity search?!?!?!
Deep and hard. Searching for wood that has been petrified for thousands of years.
where is the creepy clown candor we've all come to know and appreciate?
This certainly doesn't help.
A game day experience: Buy expensive tickets.
A 3 hour drive at least with game day traffic. Find parking far away or pay for parking close by. Get there early so you don't miss out and can enjoy the atmosphere so you need to leave at least 4 hours before the game. Be sure to buy some gas close to Ann Arbor, so you don't have to after the game. Worry about drinking or eating too much so you don't have to use the bathroom much during the game.
Sit on a hard metal bench during the game. Get sun burnt if it is September, get wet if it is October, or get cold if it is November. Lose your voice trying to help the team...I use my voice at work so Monday will be rough.
Replays are subject to the jumbotron. The bathroom is dictated by when halftime or the end of the game - it is in a crowded room that you have to wait in line for. Heaven forbid if you have to poop, the guy before you was a Buckeye truck driver that peed on the seat, had a diarrhea explosion, and messed up the toilet paper. Food is expensive and limited during the game.
Traffic is obnoxious trying to leave so best case scenario is to wait a half hour before trying to leave...expect to get home about 3 and a half hours after kickoff.
And you missed other games of interest before, after, or both before and after the Michigan game as you are on the road. You then spend all of Sunday trying to catch up on work chores and making it up to your wife for being gone all Sunday. Don't sleep in either day.
A game at home: Save money.
Wake up whenever the kids get me up. Take them outside to play. Watch parts of other games before and after the Michigan game.
During the game watch in HD with better view than from my would be nosebleed tickets. If I have to go to the bathroom I can go during any commercial quickly or simply pause the tv. If I need a replay I simply rewind the tv. At halftime I can go jog in the dunes or sprint to Lake Michigan and back while listening to the radio halftime show on my personal radio. Food options are more and cheaper.
Sunday morning I can sleep in and then exercise for a couple hours as I am not backed up with work and obligations.
You're getting me all excited! Most of those things you hate, I love! Plus I look silly doing the Blues Brothers Dance in my basement between the 3rd and 4th quarters...I still do it, but the dog looks at me funny.
When do we get to start a "There are..." countdown?
Admit it: this post was just a #humblebrag so you could tell us that you have your own *personal* radio.
Username comment alignment on point
you know the old saying, all the animals on the farm were equal, it was just that some were more equal than others.
i bet your radio has all sorts of knobs and dials and an antenna and everything.
#theenvyisreal
having season tickets and doing the drive to and from eight weekends a year. I feel like for West Michiganders, one or two games a year is good. But for anyone in SE Michigan, the calculus is much different.
it's all about the money. If it was truly disposable income - going to the game with great seats and great parking and taking the kids and wife would be a no-brainer. Nope, please don't preach just because that's how you are wired. I love football Saturdays. The excitement at the stadium is unmatched by anything on TV ... and whoopee HD. You seem like the perfect "get off my lawn" guy in the future.
Go Blue!
I don't understand your point here.
Don't forget, you can bring in your own water at home. I'm not going until that is reversed to how it was 98% of the history of M football.
Those investors who buy season tickets to sell individual tickets online. I think they lost some $ last year, so many of the investors have not bought season tickets this season. I say good ridden!
See what happens when they drop that TSA certificate training program
From 1983 - 2017 they tailgated in the Blue lot right outside the stadium. My dentist brother, his best friend (also a dentist) and his best friends family. About 14 tickets in all and they all decided to give them up this year along with their parking pass in the blue lot. Why? A number of reasons:
1. First and foremost lack of winning. The cumulative effect of 2008-2014 definitely wore on people and when the high hopes of Harbaugh werent met it was terribly disappointing to that group.
2. Night games. Yes they are older but they HATE night games with a passion. Hate having to be at a game that late and not get home to after 2am.
3. Rising costs of tickets & PSL vs actual "fun" at game. The experience, for them anyways, had reached the point where it just wasnt worth it anymore.
I'm sure there are other reasons and maybe people (like me for instance) just get older and find other things to do on Saturday's but if they're the "canary in the coal mine" things might be a bit darker going forward. This was the die-hard of all die-hard fans who went to all home games, a couple of road games and all the bowls and now they've given up their tickets. And FWIW this was a group featured in 2014 by John U Bacon in an article he posted on Yahoo sports as people who were still going to games in the depths of the Hoke era.
Interesting enough they are also hockey season ticket holders and recently purchased basketball season tickets too. So it's not Michigan sports they've grown weary of supporting - it's Michigan football.
The other canaries in the coal mine from the other end of the spectrum are the millenials who are so heavily saddled with student loan debt they don't have money to afford the tickets. There may be a seismic shift coming for both M and other schools in the near future.
Hypothetical Single Game Scenario - Family of 4
Tickets - $75 * 4 = $300
Parking - $25
Food - $40
Gas - $10
It will cost that family $375 to watch a mid tier game. That is a lot of money that could be spent on numerous other activities. This isn't a Michigan issue, it's a college football issue.
there are a few cheapie games every year on the schedule to take a family to; easily for $25 a ticket or less.
But you dont need season tickets to go that one game now do you?
That's what I do when I take my 3 kids. They don't care who we play so I'm fine getting 4 tickets to Rutgers (or Akron one year....gak) for under $100. But buying season tickets or face value tickets for a premium game? Not so much.
This is where my family is getting at this point. Doesn't have as much to do with wins and losses as it does how much work and displeasure it's become. Pretty sure once our day comes when the Blue Lot pass doesn't show up in the mail, our family could very likely give up the tickets we've had since the mid-70s. Seems like that's the last thing really anchoring our group. The in-stadium experience is getting to be a bit much, none of us like night games, we've got folks getting older, there are grandkids to spend time with...
And the simple fact that buying those tickets every year is probably going to be far too expensive for the next generation to maintain. The cost of getting in the door as a donor and holder of very good season tickets was a lot lower when my parents joined the Victors Club way back when--and there were only enough people in it to fill up a couple rows of parking. 40 years later, the few of those aging folks who are left are getting squeezed out by folks who donate more in one year than most of them could in a decade. We millennials can't keep up with that.
And, frankly, given how 1000SSS treats its donors at the lower end of the spectrum (as in, we don't care, you don't give enough anyway, take your free poster and be happy about it), why would we want to?
It's strange to think that fall revolved around Michigan Football for decades, and now, well, it doesn't seem that important anymore. Too many other things to enjoy, and the TV is right there.
I probably read this wrong but are you a millenniial with grandkids?
Got started early.
I kid. Most of our group are my parents' age, and older. That's where the grandkids come in.
What about the gameday experience is getting to be too much? I get night games aren't ideal for timing but for once a year to have an actual loud atmosphere seems worth it to me, every other fanbase has managed to figure it out. If seats are getting too expensive I get but this idea that somehow the gameday experience is worse and not as enjoyable seems like a weird take.
Too much canned music/sheer noise for noise sake when there's nothing going on, too many meatheads and drunk assholes, too much stand up/sit down/"UP IN BACK" arguments with StubHub buying morons who we never see again, $4 water when it's a thousand degrees, not enough MMB, too much commercialization and NFL-esque vibes... It's just not as fun to go to a game anymore.
Sorry if that seems like a weird take, but I'm hearing it more and more from people who have been going for decades. The entire atmosphere of the stadium has flipped, and for a lot of us, it isn't what we loved about the experience.
The fact that you can't bring in water really chaps me.
You can get free water. 1-2 of the complimentary cups is all I need
Good for you, but for the rest of us when it's 100 degrees in there, that cup is gone and/or spilled by the time you get back to your seat, should you want to do more than just chug a couple on the concourse.
But does "loud and boistrous" mean there has to be blasting sound end-to-end, even during commercial breaks when there's nothing going on?
Also, let's be honest here: Michigan Stadium has never wanted for noise when it's been warranted. People just choose to believe the "wine and cheese" myth, when you couldn't hear yourself think, say, for most of the big moments of 1997. When noise was needed, it was provided.
anymore....
But take the money out of the equation, if I lived in AA, I would be at every game. Even the Oregon States and Cincinnatis. Bought my season tickets in Harbaugh Year 1, getting in on the ground floor. We go to 2 or 3 games per year and sell the rest on Stubhub. It's 4 hours each way for us. It would be super easy to just watch on TV, but I am just really addicted to the game experience. Walking around town before the game. We are early arrivers in the stadium, usually 45 minutes before kickoff. Love watching the stadium start to fill up. Watching the players from both teams getting loose. And the BAND!!! Whenever I give my tickets to someone, I make them promise to be in their seats 20 minutes before kickoff, so they can experience the band.
My son plays soccer for his HS, and that and other things get in the way of attending from time to time. A couple of years ago, the Saturday of the Hawaii game was free, but its Hawaii, so I was going to sell, but my son insisted that we go. I resisted, but he won. After the band finished and the players had run out and touched the banner, I told my son that he was right and I was so glad we came. There is nothing like being in that town and stadium on game day. It is the greatest.
so this may benefit me. I still don't like to see this drop in demand.
Always gonna have a drop in these even years without MSU or OSU. Really need to flip that MSU game back. Thanks DB
Massage the numbers any way you want to, if the 2018 Michigan team lives up to its tremendous potential, or even comes close, the bottom line for demand for Michigan football tickets is that it is going to be a VERY tough ticket to come by at a reasonable price.
I may take someone to a game who has never been there, or I may go to a home or away game with my buddy from college, snackyx. Other than that, the games are more enjoyable at the bar, or at home.
While the game didn't mean much, I don't ever see how I can top the stadium experience of Under the Lights, and I saw Desmond's game-ending catch against ND back in the day. If it is a meaninful bowl game, or the playoff, I'm in for personally attending no matter where it is.
Wait until they have to start begging millenials to show up once the baby boomers stop going. It will be an ugly scene across the country for college football.
I am a millenial with season tickets. However, I don't see myself keeping tickets when friends and family members stop renewing.