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Some breaking season tix news
July 21, 2009
(3:39 p.m.): Went to UC on Monday to talk to Mike Waddell, senior associate athletic director extraordinaire, about football season tickets and how those were selling. In the process, he let slip about a new offer for basketball season tickets that Waddell says you can't find anywhere else in the Big East. First, the basketball season tickets news. I'm sure you know about the Bearcat Lair football season ticket packages the UC administration has put together the past few years, which basically allows fans to grab those North end zone seats for a cheaper-than-normal price (two years ago, season tickets in that area cost $60; this year, it went for $160 (the past three years, by the way, those 1,750 Bearcat Lair seats have sold out, including the 2009 campaign)). Well, the Bearcats are using the same brand name for 5/3 Arena. Basically, UC will put on sale a block of the seats in the upper level (non-seat backs) and price it at $150 for the 18-game schedule. To Waddell, the deal - which works out to $8.33 a seat per game - is a no-brainer. "I defy you to find anybody else who is selling a $150 season ticket in the Big East," Waddell said. "It doesn't exist. But you know what our goal is? It's to respond to the economic climate we're in and not do - not do - what other schools did when the economy went bad and they started giving $5 tickets here and there and cutting the prices. I cannot have a guy sitting in one seat with a season ticket that has paid the value and then have another guy who's coming off the street and buying it at a discount. I will not do that to our season ticket bases." Waddell is passionate about that point. He will not cut prices for the short-term. He's adamant about protecting the season-ticket holder. "Unlike those schools who really didn't treat their season ticket holders with a lot of respect, you can't do that in this environment," Waddell said. "Cincinnati athletics needs to value their customers. Did we lose some money last year by not (cutting prices)? Yeah, we did. Was it a lot of money in the big picture? No, it wasn't, because frankly, our integrity and getting the trust of our fans is one of the top priorities. In the long run, we're going to make partners with the patrons we treat with respect. You're going to make that money back in the long run."
UC likely will announce the season basketball tickets deal later this week. So, No. 2, let's talk about football season tickets. Right now, more than 15,000 tickets have been sold and allocated, which is a slight uptick from last year's final total. Waddell says that if ticket sales ended today, UC would have increased their base by about 5 percent from 2008. Here's the breakdown of tickets sold and allocated from the past four years: 2006: 9,123 2007: 10,937 2008: 14,479 2009: more than 15,000 and could get as high as 17,000
Considering Waddell said UC has severely cut the number of comps the school is giving out ("I don't need to give away tickets," he said, "nor do I want to."), the number of tickets that actually are sold to fans continue to increase in the Brian Kelly age. "We've set a record every year we've been here," Waddell said. "Everything our guys do downstairs (in the ticket office), they kick and scratch and claw for by building relationships. That's how we've gone from 6,000 to 15,000-plus. In the light of this economy, the vast majority of (school's ticket sales) are not going up. They're going backward." I'll have Part II on ticket sales later this week.
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