Big Ten ticket values plummeting
We saw earlier this week that Michigan's prices are falling through the floor on StubHub. Well, we aren't alone.
Indiana at Ohio State: $19.80
Northwestern at Purdue: $5.15
PSU at Illinois: $3.70
Heck, even the best of the bunch, the storied Iowa at Wisconsin rivalry with both teams in contention in the West, is selling on the medium-cheap, where $52 would have seemed paltry for a game versus Northern Iowa just a few years ago.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:21 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:36 AM ^
Sample sizes and context are irrelevant when--qualitatively--you introduce a phenomenon that literally hasn't happened in decades. Prices like these at UNL, Michigan, and Ohio State are unprecedented across the last 40 years.
"No prior snapshot of the situation was like this. Suddenly, a snapshot of the situation is like this." The trend, P-value, and frigid weather are immaterial when that is the case.
November 22nd, 2014 at 1:33 PM ^
I think the Big 10 is an early warning of a trend that will increase around college football. Younger people are into electronics more and don't have as good of job prospects- shelling out big bucks for season tickets doesn't appeal to them.
I think CFB is going to have to scale back prices and salaries in the future- many young people aren't into this at all- look at the average age of the fans.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:34 PM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:34 PM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:21 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:45 AM ^
I'm not sure why people are negging you, you are absolutely correct. The Big Ten has not been good since around 2006.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:50 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:51 AM ^
The whole WD-MGoBlog-Dave Brandon firing saga has attracted WD a small gang of auto-neggers
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:11 PM ^
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November 22nd, 2014 at 2:04 PM ^
There are a bunch of people who were attacking him well before the e-mail entertainment.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:56 PM ^
Maybe if you actually read the thread instead of just the title, you'd think otherwise, Professor X.
Just in case anyone wondered, he changed his name to GROOT. Just go and look at the Hockey threads from last year.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:21 AM ^
I am trying to give two 18th row seats and a parking pass away and CANNOT do it.
So glad I got season tickets....
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:22 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:22 AM ^
When you're playing schools you couldn't care less about (Maryland, Rutgers, even Nebraska), at games that are increasingly long and drawn out by TV timeouts, in stadiums that have security measures that rival your average airport, where a single hot dog costs more than the ticket, and the conference TV network shows everything to you in glittering HD in the warmth of your own home...
Can we really be surprised anymore?
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:25 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:43 AM ^
Nebraska was a great addition and represented everything the conference historically took pride in.
Maryland and Rutgers...ahhh...no, we should not be surprised that this type of foolish money-motivated addition is killing the golden goose.
Sigh.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:24 AM ^
I'd be much more willing to buy football season tickets if there weren't TV timeouts every 7 minutes.
When are the presidents of the B10 going to stand up and tell ESPN to take out some of the TV timeouts for the sake of the at-game experience? Worried about money? Fewer TV timeouts = more competition to drive up to ad market. Even if that doesn't happen, then so what? We get a million less a year? Good trade off.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:26 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:30 AM ^
ESPN is paying the colleges for the right to telecast the games. There's room for negotiation.
Fox owns the BTN. Do you think EPSN would let the B10 move major games to Fox without so much as negotiation?
And if it means less money to the individual Universities, then so be it. You'll make some of that money back by re-filling the stadium thanks to a restored fan experience.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:30 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:58 AM ^
The Big Ten Network (BTN) is an American regional sports network that is owned as a joint venture between the Big Ten Conference (which owns 49% of the network) and the Fox Entertainment Group subsidiary of 21st Century Fox (which owns a controlling 51% interest), and is operated by Fox Sports. It is the first internationally distributed network dedicated to covering a single collegiate athletic conference.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:41 AM ^
The timeouts are terrible. I recently went to a HS game (playoff) for the first time in years. Of course, there were no TV timeouts and it was a *much* better experience.
Now, I'm not expecting that for Div-1 football, but they've got to figure out a way to get the games to being about 3 hours. As it is now, if a game is competitive, 4 hours is more the case. And if that means there is 5-10% less ad "inventory" and thus 5-10% less money, they will have to figure out a way to make do. With pretty much every Power 5 school planning on spending literally hundreds of millions to expand their empires, they've got plenty of fat to cut.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:30 PM ^
Somehow the British Premier League is a television juggarnaut and they don't even have a break outside of half time. It can easily be done.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:51 PM ^
See those ad boards along the sidelines? That's how they do it. Frankly, I cannot believe that our own TV overlords haven't figured out that they can line the sidelines with ad's and cut to a commericial every time someone sneezes.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:32 AM ^
I should feel butthurt but I guess I am happy. I am staring at my PSD thinking wtf.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:14 PM ^
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November 22nd, 2014 at 11:33 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:34 AM ^
The price of Sparty tickets compared to Michigan tickets prove the one concept that Sparty fans will always hate because they know in their heart it's true: even a terrible Michigan team is more relevant than a very good Sparty team.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:39 AM ^
Swap out the adjective "relevant" for "valuable" and I can agree with you.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:01 PM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:34 AM ^
Except for OSU the last few weeks and perhaps Wisconsin's running game, have you watched a single B1G game this year and thought, "Whoa, those guys are really good?" I know we joke about B1G football as two walruses smacking into each other, but the reality isn't a lot different these days. The skill players exist in small numbers.
I mean, if I wasn't a UM fan, I'd much rather watch Arizona-Utah (two ranked teams with good offenses that are still vying for a div title) than UM-Maryland (two thoroughly mediocre teams playing for the right to go to Quicklane Bowl).
Pair that with the fact it's been unseasonably cold for the past week, and most side streets are currently ice rinks (I skidded through one stop sign and also down one driveway this morning -- fun!), who's going to go sit outside and watch UM or MSU play teams 95% of its fans literally don't care about?
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:41 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:44 AM ^
If you're looking at gameday pricing, you aren't getting a true look at values (though not many folks want to sit out in this crappy weather for weak games). Many of the tickets get auto-pulled from stubhub a certain amount of days before the game. Those that remain are in a fight to the bottom of the barrel.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:45 AM ^
$52 would have seemed paltry for a game versus Northern Iowa just a few years ago.Let's not overly romanticize the past. Games against MAC cupcakes have always been cheap on the secondary market for fans of any B1G school.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:04 PM ^
Iowa needed two end-of-game blocked FGs to beat them a few years ago.
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:47 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:48 AM ^
Still really surprising to me that MSU, right in the middle of their best football in 50+ years, cannot sell out their stadium. Several games this year have had noticeable vacancies
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:51 AM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:54 AM ^
The early word coming out of Spartan Stadium, according to Spartans:
"the smallest crowd we've ever seen."
November 22nd, 2014 at 11:56 AM ^
It's the huge canary in the coal mine. MSU football for the past ~4 years has been as successful as they could have ever hoped. Yet, they still don't sell out most games. Heck, these $3.50 tickets were available earlier this week, so it's not just a "gameday dump" thing -- there are/were literally hundreds of tickets available for less than $10.
And I'm not sure how they're going to fix it -- they've overexpanded the conference, overbuilt their facilities and are completely beholden to TV contracts.
November 22nd, 2014 at 1:27 PM ^
I would tend to agree with this - when even teams doing well (better than they really ever have perhaps, in the case of MSU) cannot regularly sell out games, it definitely says a lot about the state of things in the conference. The Big Ten has all this functional capacity, in a sense, but not nearly enough good matchups to fill it between its own members. Of course, the unreliable weather in the Midwest in the fall does not help matters. but as someone pointed out, it seemed like more people would tough it out than nowadays, a sign of a vastly changed fan experience as well as technology making most any game access by some means in real time.
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:12 PM ^
November 22nd, 2014 at 12:13 PM ^
has any money, or free time.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:04 PM ^
It's not just the money for game day experience, it's the time as well. As others have pointed out, the tv timeouts make the games too long, and add in the couple to several hours driving and parking most people endure, and it just doesn't make sense for a lot of people to spend that time and money.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:46 PM ^
It's my Saturday to work. Usually that means watching the ESPN app. The games are so unappealing I'm doing busywork and checking mgoblog because that seems to be better use of my time instead of watching those games.
November 22nd, 2014 at 3:32 PM ^
Everybody has more things that they can do at ALL times.
Despite bringing in experts on marketing and branding the past regime missed something that is well known to anyone who uses any of the modern media regularly: the audience is now fractionated. Because there is no oligopoly of only three or four channels, TV tastes are now broken up into different often tiny distinct groups - the days of a single massively popular show like the old Mary Tyler Moore show, MASH, Gunsmoke or Lassie are over.
For the younger people it is even more pronounced - what catches their interest is ephermeal (twitter, viral videos, memes) and very unpredictable.
If places like Alabama and East Lansing have problems filling their stadiums despite having record setting successful teams it should a bucket of ice water on the heads of the marketing people that more and louder rock music is NOT the answer nor is giving away $10 t-shirts when the typical undergrad thinks nothing of blowing $40 each weekend.
Thank you for listening and now please get off of my lawn.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:52 PM ^
UM sucks
Much of the rest of the B1G sucks, so even if UM were undefeated, their home schedule this year would have made for boring games. The B1G would be much better off if teams like Illinois, Purdue, Iowa, or N'Western could get back to getting themselves ranked every 3-5 years or so, and UM, PSU, MSU, and OSU were annually vying for the conference title. Here's something sickening...Michigan did not play a home game this year where a ranked team was involved. UM was never ranked, and they never hosted a ranked opponent. When was the last time that happened?!
There are SO MANY GAMES on TV now, that giving up a day to tailgate, sit through a 4 hour game, then sit in traffic on the way home brings up an opportunity cost of not watching another great game. I remember after the '05 PSU game (Touchdown Manningham, Michigan wins!) crowding around the bed of a pickup truck at Pioneer HS watching the end of the ND/USC classic (the "Bush Push"). Last Saturday I had a football game on one TV in the basement, a hockey game on the other TV, and 4 games on WatchESPN.com on the laptop sitting on the coffee table. I'd give that up for UM/OSU, or MSU, or to see a ranked Michigan team play a higher ranked team. But I'm not giving that up to see them play 3 win Indiana.
I was at the UM/PSU game last year where they have incredible free wifi at Beaver Stadium. I had the game streaming through WatchESPN on my phone. THAT was awesome! I got the benefit of being there, and with a 8-10 second delay after the play was over on the field I watched the "replay" of it on the phone, where as we all know with football (unlike hockey or baseball), TV provides the best seat in the house. Around Michigan Stadium, I can't even make a G-damn phone call.
But even if UM were undefeated right now, would people love the program more? Absolutely. Would they be more likely to go to the games? I don't know. Giving up all that other stuff to watch UM beat an Indiana team on their 4th string QB 52-10 or to beat up on Maryland 41-6 in freezing rain, etc. just isn't all that appealing.