GP1

I love your Thought 1. In fact I think the ignorance is deeper than you describe because even high school athletics attendance is down. Since fans don't have an in person baseline to draw from, they cannot draw a comparison in their minds when they see it in person. I'm always shocked at how hard D1 BB players are playing defense. It's something high school players could never come close to competing against. MAC football is also very good. There isn't much difference between a bottom 25% P5 football program and Toledo or Miami this year. Wake Forest isn't much better than the OU team I saw Akron play after Thanksgiving last season. We have the transfer portal to thank for that. Humans are the only animal capable of convincing itself of things that simply aren't true. If everyone remembers when the Browns were struggling a few years ago, there were a lot of people who I'm sure never attended an NFL game in their life, would say Alabama or OSU could beat the Browns. I work with a guy whose brother is a well known defensive coordinator for a team that will be playing this weekend. When people were saying this he asked his brother what he thought. His brother laughed out loud and told him Cleveland would beat either Alabama or OSU 77-0 and the college team would have trouble getting a first down. It would almost be cruel.

So, if someone has two lower bowl tickets and bank them, do they get their tickets and X more for a future game?

It's more than the price of the event. Start time is important but since we let TV networks, who don't care about attendance as they are better off if everyone stayed home and watched the game on TV, decide our start times, we will struggle with attendance. Why can't the MAC get with a western conference like the MWC, go to CBS and see if they would do a MAC/MWC triple header? Play MAC games at 6 and 8 PM and then the MWC at 10? There is a big difference for fans between an 8 and 9 PM start.

Of course, the inability to draw a big crowd has everything to do with the cost of sodas and not the 9PM start. I can't imagine how uninterested I would be in going after working my butt off all week, coming home exhausted, having to haul my butt off to dinner, going to a late starting game and then not getting home until almost midnight. I'd probably give my tickets away to someone who actually would use them.

Reason ten thousand I'm glad we are not KSU or YSU. I'd imagine with all of this cheap parking, they are drawing overflow crowds.

If Friday night's game was on pay per view, I would have paid $25 to watch it.

Probably bidets in the bathroom.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the cost of a basketball ticket to Hudson High School. It costs $8.00 for an adult to attend a high school basketball game. The quality of play at the mid major level shouldn't even be compared to a HS, but some think tickets should cost less. It's utter insanity.

Ok, I looked it up. Yes for exhibitions and non conference in seats that would make it difficult to see which sport is being played. Everything else is more expensive. BTW, OSU is a terrible place to watch a basketball game. https://www.wdtn.com/news/ohio-state-to-set-mens-basketball-ticket-prices-for-2023-24-season/

I don't know and I don't care. The first time I went to a Wake Forest football game with the luckiest woman in the world, Mrs. GP1, we bought two tickets and parked at the basketball area across the street from the stadium where single game ticket holders park. There was a huge line to get into the lot. When we got to the front, we realized they were charging $8.50 to park and it was taking the morons taking the money forever to make change because of the coins and singles. It was stupid beyond belief. My wife was livid at the stupidity and said she would gladly pay an extra $1.50 up to $10 to avoid the line. She didn't say they should round down to $5.00. Akron has a very good mid major basketball program, in a competitive conference with entertaining games. The prices they are changing are not unreasonable in the least. If you want cheap tickets and free parking, maybe high school games are more your speed.

I agree. Can the university execute on both?

Anyone who doesn't want to pay $10 to go to one game really doesn't want to go in the first place. The next time someone tells you that, you should come up with a polite way to tell them they are full of poop.

I can't believe there isn't a discussion about how to help lower bowl season ticket holders get their unused tickets to people who can attend the games.

You can barely see the game going on from those seats. To watch them play Delaware State, NJIT, Presbyterian and Charleston Southern? Going from $10 to $7 is meaningless. Going from $10 to $13 would be equally as meaningless.

How do you know?

The ABJ is not responsible for selling tickets and is not the problem. They are a convenient punching bag for people who want to blame someone or something, but they are not the real problem.

Then what should the price be? A friend of mine made a good point to me about price increases last week. He said the only difference between a 5% and 10% price increase is the noise from the channels. People are always going to complain about pricing. If the price was $1.00 per ticket, there would be a certain number of people who complain. The worst seats for a Wake Forest basketball game are further away from the court than the bleacher seats in Akron and in the upper deck behind the basket. They are also the cheapest at $40 per seat plus a parking fee per game. The price of GA tickets at UA is peanuts. A family of four can attend a game for $40. That same family of four would have to pay $160 at Wake.

Depends on what it's for. For one of the best Zips teams in a long time playing against opponents in a very good league and entertaining games, it's probably under priced. $10 to see a D1 basketball game is peanuts.

Does the University do a good job of letting people know there are really good seats available?

Is your season package for every game? When you bank them, can another person have an opportunity to buy the game you are banking?

The dynamics of college athletics attendance around the country have changed in the past 10 years. One mistake universities are making is selling expensive tickets for the sake of selling the tickets. No consideration is given to whether or not anyone shows up. The tickets exist just to fun athletics but not benefit the athletes students alumni fans and general community. It's as gross as most everything that goes on in college athletics. These tickets get sold to companies and older people who tend to have more money. You guys see this at basketball games. I see it at Wake Forest football games. They had three "sold out" games last year where the stadium was half empty. I would ask the following questions. 1. Do we have a problem selling tickets? 2. Do we have a problem getting season ticket holders to the games? 3. If both are a problem, which one is more important to solve? 4. Is it possible to solve both at the same time?

That would mean it's 1834 and María Cristina de Borbón is the athletic director.

You make a good point about people using tickets as a donation. I'm not a big fan of someone doing this if they aren't going to maximize their donation with attendance. The technology exists to know who is using tickets or not. Maybe it's time to work with some season ticket holders who are no using their tickets to see if maybe a donation to the Foundation in the same amount coupled with a tax benefit is best for them. Then they can get those tickets to maybe, let's be honest, younger fans who would use them.

Thanks. So, it looks like there was bad weather in NE Ohio yesterday, the holidays just ended, the flu is pretty bad in Ohio right now and the game started at 9 PM against what is not considered a historically good MAC program. In many ways I get why the crowd was small. On the other hand, why aren't these season ticket holders at least giving their tickets away? I understand not wanting to go to a 9 PM game, but these people have to know SOMEONE who would use them. Does the University have a convenient way for season ticket holders to get their unused tickets into the hands of someone else? Step one needs to be getting season ticket holders to show up. Step two, have a convenient method to get the tickets that will not be used to someone else. When I lived in Akron, I didn't go to many MBB games because lower bowl tickets were not available, only the clergy during the Spanish Inquisition would have been fans of the bleachers and generally didn't like the view from the upper bowl chair backs. That was 16 years ago and the technology to move tickets from one person to another now exists and is easy to use. I would have gone to many more games if that technology existed then and the season ticket holders took advantage of it.

I generally think if every taxpayer in Ohio received four general admission tickets to two MAC sporting events of their choice per year, there would have been more people. Are all of the seats in the lower bowl sold and people are not showing up?