New Bobby Dodd Stadium survey from AA

wishbone

Dodd-Like
Joined
Nov 3, 2009
Messages
5,298
Putting chairbacks in is going to push the STHs who pay and donate the most away from the 'prime' seats they've spent time and money (raising their AT Fund points) moving to. That won't go over well.
Wider and deeper seats in the west= farther away until...


Always a challenge- advance new premium product, but don't cannibalize existing revenue stream. Ergo need for the survey?
 

GetTheTruth

Varsity Lurker
Joined
Jun 14, 2021
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1
Invest in getting the students to own and value a game day experience. While this may be particularly challenging given the heavy international presence, creating extreme energy and engagement within the student body will create the environment GT desires to create.
 

BrentwoodJacket

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Dec 24, 2007
Messages
9,747
Invest in getting the students to own and value a game day experience. While this may be particularly challenging given the heavy international presence, creating extreme energy and engagement within the student body will create the environment GT desires to create.
Why not solve the demographic issue by prioritizing admissions for students from Georgia and then the remainder of the US. Also solves the alumni issue long term.
 

BainbridgeJacket

F*** Joe Biden
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Apr 21, 2009
Messages
16,011
The low-end strategy of selling cheap tickets or even giving them away HAS been our dominant strategy for awhile now. The GTAA regularly gives tickets away to underprivileged groups, veterans, and others. This strategy has not led to an increase in revenues or ticket sales (i.e. return purchases from those groups or other).

We have to decide if we're going to be Kia (sell a lot of cheap things), or Mercedes (sell fewer, more expensive things). We're already a small fanbase and efforts to increase the fanbase through give-aways or other means hasn't been super successful. Given that our season ticket holders are a small group of generally well-to-do alumni (at least more so than your average SEC school), going with Option B makes sense.

By the way, you and I likely feel VERY similarly about the direction of college football, how big money is ruining it, and how the most important thing is the product on the field. In general, I buy cheap seats to most sporting events and pay attention to every second of play. Still, I want the best long-term thing for Tech, and if that requires me to step up a bit, I'm personally willing to do it. I still think they should be super-sensitive to have many options for those who aren't willing to. To me, the most important part is that people fill out the survey and give their honest opinion.
To expand: try giving away tickets to the game to people in real life. I had the honor of giving away company tickets once. Office with well over 100 Tech grads and I literally couldn't find a taker. It was an ACC game, too.

We have to improve the experience, but everything I see is trending towards making the experience worse. I can't blame people for not wanting to go when, frankly, I don't enjoy it either.
 

wesleyd21

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Joined
Jul 16, 2007
Messages
16,143
Why not solve the demographic issue by prioritizing admissions for students from Georgia and then the remainder of the US. Also solves the alumni issue long term.
Georgia-based students pay less to The Institute than out-of-state students do. The more out-of-state acceptances GT takes…the better.

Not necessarily an ideal recipe for long term football program support.
 

BrentwoodJacket

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Dec 24, 2007
Messages
9,747
Georgia-based students pay less to The Institute than out-of-state students do. The more out-of-state acceptances GT takes…the better.

Not necessarily an ideal recipe for long term football program support.
The better for who? More foreign students are certainly not better for the state of Georgia, the United States or our athletic programs. The marginal tuition difference is a rounding error compared to the current endowment.
 
Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
2,537
Sounds like the GTAA is going the "cheap and cheerful" approach to dealing with the large shortage of luxury seating and large surplus of regular bleacher seating. Sigh. I guess this means I won't see BDS ever fully redone from the ground up as a holistic vision in my lifetime. And I've got most of that left still. :(

Sounds like an endzone will be turned into patio seating. And a "CL1-4"-ish sized space will get turned into bartop seating.

Look ... I get it ... it's shortcut to solve three problems (revenue, surplus regular seating, shortage premium seating) at the same time. I just wished the GTAA thought bigger on this. The campus master plan is overdue for an update. And they still haven't even put in the tailgating green space outside the North Endzone that is in the current plan.

Current, with what I'd redo:

BDS-1.jpg




Here's what a holistic 55-60k horseshoe to scale looks like... where you get the #'s from mostly sideline seats instead of a massive endzone. That's T. Boone Pickens Stadium I used:

BDS-2.jpg


Techwood could be rerouted to go meet Williams St NW if it had to be. Ideally this would be dug into the Earth more than built above it. A large shade canopy and sound reflector like the Seahawks/Ducks on the west stands. Build in new dining options for not just fans but the students replacing Brittain. That should be wildly popular with the students. You could also build in new dorms either in the margins or into the stadium facade a la FSU. The big gray box at the end is for a very large multi-story building to enclose the horseshoe, house the jumbotron on its facade, house premium seating options, and offset lost facilities (Edge/Wardlaw) and indeed supplement them. This also opens up lots of possibilities for tailgating, green spaces, parking decks, and RV parking on the east side of the stadium. Make it all chairbacks except visiting and student sections. Have your premium bar top / club / restaurant / patio seating in the lower endzone/corners. Stick the visiting fans as close as possible to the South Endzone so they soak up all the "can't view the jumbotron" seats. Give 'em the upper endzone corners beyond that.

Come on it'll only cost most of a billion dollars didn't you people invest in Gamestop and Dogecoin come on we're taking this football program to the moon b*tches! Or something. A fella can dream at least.
 
Last edited:

BigDanT

J. Batt Fan
Joined
Jul 1, 2015
Messages
11,643
Sounds like the GTAA is going the "cheap and cheerful" approach to dealing with the large shortage of luxury seating and large surplus of regular bleacher seating. Sigh. I guess this means I won't see BDS ever fully redone from the ground up as a holistic vision in my lifetime. And I've got most of that left still. :(

Sounds like an endzone will be turned into patio seating. And a "CL1-4"-ish sized space will get turned into bartop seating.

Look ... I get it ... it's shortcut to solve three problems (revenue, surplus regular seating, shortage premium seating) at the same time. I just wished the GTAA thought bigger on this. The campus master plan is overdue for an update. And they still haven't even put in the tailgating green space outside the North Endzone that is in the current plan.

Current, with what I'd redo:

BDS-1.jpg




Here's what a holistic 55-60k horseshoe to scale looks like... where you get the #'s from mostly sideline seats instead of a massive endzone. That's T. Boone Pickens Stadium I used:

BDS-2.jpg


Techwood could be rerouted to go meet Williams St NW if it had to be. Ideally this would be dug into the Earth more than built above it. A large shade canopy and sound reflector like the Seahawks/Ducks on the west stands. Build in new dining options for not just fans but the students replacing Brittain. That should be wildly popular with the students. You could also build in new dorms either in the margins or into the stadium facade a la FSU. The big gray box at the end is for a very large multi-story building to enclose the horseshoe, house the jumbotron on its facade, house premium seating options, and offset lost facilities (Edge/Wardlaw) and indeed supplement them. This also opens up lots of possibilities for tailgating, green spaces, parking decks, and RV parking on the east side of the stadium. Make it all chairbacks except visiting and student sections. Have your premium bar top / club / restaurant / patio seating in the lower endzone/corners. Stick the visiting fans as close as possible to the South Endzone so they soak up all the "can't view the jumbotron" seats. Give 'em the upper endzone corners beyond that.

Come on it'll only cost most of a billion dollars didn't you people invest in Gamestop and Dogecoin come on we're taking this football program to the moon b*tches! Or something. A fella can dream at least.
I mean I agree that’s what it should be. That’s what it almost really would have been projected from the 69s to now. But damn it if it ain’t beer impossible now.
 

BainbridgeJacket

F*** Joe Biden
Joined
Apr 21, 2009
Messages
16,011
Sounds like the GTAA is going the "cheap and cheerful" approach to dealing with the large shortage of luxury seating and large surplus of regular bleacher seating. Sigh. I guess this means I won't see BDS ever fully redone from the ground up as a holistic vision in my lifetime. And I've got most of that left still. :(

Sounds like an endzone will be turned into patio seating. And a "CL1-4"-ish sized space will get turned into bartop seating.

Look ... I get it ... it's shortcut to solve three problems (revenue, surplus regular seating, shortage premium seating) at the same time. I just wished the GTAA thought bigger on this. The campus master plan is overdue for an update. And they still haven't even put in the tailgating green space outside the North Endzone that is in the current plan.

Current, with what I'd redo:

BDS-1.jpg




Here's what a holistic 55-60k horseshoe to scale looks like... where you get the #'s from mostly sideline seats instead of a massive endzone. That's T. Boone Pickens Stadium I used:

BDS-2.jpg


Techwood could be rerouted to go meet Williams St NW if it had to be. Ideally this would be dug into the Earth more than built above it. A large shade canopy and sound reflector like the Seahawks/Ducks on the west stands. Build in new dining options for not just fans but the students replacing Brittain. That should be wildly popular with the students. You could also build in new dorms either in the margins or into the stadium facade a la FSU. The big gray box at the end is for a very large multi-story building to enclose the horseshoe, house the jumbotron on its facade, house premium seating options, and offset lost facilities (Edge/Wardlaw) and indeed supplement them. This also opens up lots of possibilities for tailgating, green spaces, parking decks, and RV parking on the east side of the stadium. Make it all chairbacks except visiting and student sections. Have your premium bar top / club / restaurant / patio seating in the lower endzone/corners. Stick the visiting fans as close as possible to the South Endzone so they soak up all the "can't view the jumbotron" seats. Give 'em the upper endzone corners beyond that.

Come on it'll only cost most of a billion dollars didn't you people invest in Gamestop and Dogecoin come on we're taking this football program to the moon b*tches! Or something. A fella can dream at least.
No.
 
Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
2,537
TCF Bank Stadium was $300 million in the late 00's. It is similar design, location (urban), and size. You're knocking on $500m adjusting for inflation to do something similar in Atlanta. Or we can keep doing $75m ugly endzone here, $70m new Edge there and keep pouring roughly as much money over roughly as much time into continuous renovations and stopgaps and coats of paint without ever really addressing the long term needs. I realize the second is kinda the MO for the GTAA, but I really thought with Cabrera and Stansbury GT might finally be in position to start swimming instead of treading water.
 

FatJacket

Helluva Engineer
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,205
Basically all the öööö in that survey sounded terrible. Between the sky-high prices ($900 for my current seat on the 25 on the east side, up to a couple of thousand for that seat with chairbacks) and the emphasis on turning the stadium into a ööööing social club, they would have done something I thought impossible - convince me to just stay home and watch it on TV.

I told them as much in the survey - I’ve never been more blunt, negative, and pessimistic in a survey response before. These plans would remake football at BDS into something that I have no interest in participating in.

JRjr
You don’t participate, you observe.

I want modern game day experiences in BDS like we used to have.
 

FatJacket

Helluva Engineer
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,205
To expand: try giving away tickets to the game to people in real life. I had the honor of giving away company tickets once. Office with well over 100 Tech grads and I literally couldn't find a taker. It was an ACC game, too.

We have to improve the experience, but everything I see is trending towards making the experience worse. I can't blame people for not wanting to go when, frankly, I don't enjoy it either.
You can give tics away to a GT game if you are in Peking, idiot.
 

athensjacket

Varsity Lurker
Joined
Sep 26, 2020
Messages
132
TCF Bank Stadium was $300 million in the late 00's. It is similar design, location (urban), and size. You're knocking on $500m adjusting for inflation to do something similar in Atlanta. Or we can keep doing $75m ugly endzone here, $70m new Edge there and keep pouring roughly as much money over roughly as much time into continuous renovations and stopgaps and coats of paint without ever really addressing the long term needs. I realize the second is kinda the MO for the GTAA, but I really thought with Cabrera and Stansbury GT might finally be in position to start swimming instead of treading water.
And then after we throw half a billion away on stadium gee gaws we'll still be left wondering why there are so many empty seats. What we're going to do is jack ticket prices up until the average fan is priced out of the market. The only "long term need" this program has is to win football games. Win and they will come. Lose and they will stay home. It's really that simple.
 

The Champ

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Joined
Sep 28, 2008
Messages
8,622
And then after we throw half a billion away on stadium gee gaws we'll still be left wondering why there are so many empty seats. What we're going to do is jack ticket prices up until the average fan is priced out of the market. The only "long term need" this program has is to win football games. Win and they will come. Lose and they will stay home. It's really that simple.
Slim chance in hell the average fan is ever actually priced out of the GT ticket market. That only occurs when you have enough demand to fill your stadium
 
Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
2,537
And then after we throw half a billion away on stadium gee gaws we'll still be left wondering why there are so many empty seats. What we're going to do is jack ticket prices up until the average fan is priced out of the market. The only "long term need" this program has is to win football games. Win and they will come. Lose and they will stay home. It's really that simple.

Better seats command more fans and dollars. I was in the Upper North for the Miracle on North Avenue. Even with an outstanding game I decided I wasn't sitting up there again. You need a sherpa and a mountain goat. You can't even hear the band that well. BDS needs more seats of higher quality broadly speaking up and down the price point list on the sidelines. The current stadium, so long as ATL won't let GT build over Techwood, is never going to able to address those needs on its current footprint.
 
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