Will the new Tech Fund create under priced football tix?

thwg

thwg

Damn Good Rat
Joined
Sep 10, 2003
Messages
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This is not a TIC post. I'm trying to figure out what can be learned from recent ticket sales and also what is the norm for GT. For the most part, GT fans are as cheap as they come and GT grads are even cheaper when it comes to sports. So, the chance of all or even say 75% of the donor seats being sold as season tix is rather slim IMO. If so, how will the tix be sold on the 20-30 YL that had been sold to season ticket holders previously?

I'm guessing they will offer season ticket holders the three game packs first based on precedent. I would prefer they would offer them to Tech Fund donors at a certain level first to ensure more GT fans in the game but I'm not sure there is a way to sell the extras to GT fans.

The irony of this plan is 3 game plans are now the same price as the previous few seasons with ultimate flexibility yet with better seats than ever being sold. So, if a 3 game pack had a market value last year of $135-$145 or so, then does a 3 game pack this year (UGA, CLEM, VT) actually have a market value of $200 or so?

The ND/MIA and one more last year might have yielded tix in the corners of the East or West or more likely in the Upper North. This season the cost is the same but will a 3 game pack actually produce lower sideline seats worth perhaps 25%-40% more on the open market?

It seems there is an arbitrage here if one can know how to get the best three game packs. Do you think GT would sell the 3 game packs at more than face to brokers before they go on sale to the season ticket holders? That's my fear but it would actually be a good business decision and a way to counteract the arbitrage opportunity.

Empire, who previously has owned more than 200 GT season tickets (and over 400 mini-packs last year) will surely not pay the tax for that many season tickets. But, would they cut a deal with the AA to buy up rows of tickets in 127 and 128 for say $150 each? Would the AA sell to brokers before they sell to fans? This Tech Fund model is likely creating under priced good seats. How will GT maximize this opportunity? Regardless or whether the AA maximizes the ticket value, GT fans will be fewer than ever between the 20s which should make for some interesting posts on all message boards. This is not necesarily a criticism of the AA because remember my initial point, Tech fans are cheap;)
 
I went down to the wire before deciding not to pay the $600 for three Section 109 tickets. Before blasting my non-loyalty to GT, hear me out.

1. I have had season tickets for 18 years while a resident of the Raleigh area - 820 mile round trip.
2. I am a minister. The moving of game times to 3:30 and 7:30 on twelve day notice has caused me to miss many games the past several years.I take almost all of my annual vacation for Tech football weekends. During the four years my son played high school football I bought tickets that I could use only once or twice a year.
3. I made a good contribution to AT Fund after receiving a December letter. As my tickets are at about the fifteen yard line, I was originally told seats outside the twenties would not have the ticket fee. I was surprised by the $200 per ticket fee.
4. It is just a bad economic decision for me to add $600 to a season ticket cost when I can only be sure to make three of seven games this year - two vacation weekends and the Thursday game. I will be able to get good tickets for those games for far less.
5. I will continue to support AT fund, Roll Call, and GT. The $600 surcharge just doesn't make sense for me. I hope the calculations made by the staff are good ones, that most will pay, and I will be one of a only a few who does not.
6. If I want to get back season tickets next year, there is now no reward for loyalty over consecutive seasons. I can pay the amount I am willing to pay and get into the section of choice.
 
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what i believe is, we will lose the little bit of home field advantage that we now have against the dawgs and clemsons of the world. the crowd before this tech fund was only about 60-40 in favor or tech. it may be that we have games with more opposing fans.
 
ncjacket said:
Wow, has there ever been a pos with so many "what ifs"?
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wow, has there ever been a more smug, arrogant poster than ncjacket? No speculation for you in life as you've got it all figured out, right?

One would think if you wanted to take the time to respond you might comment on whether or not the Tech fund will create under priced "good" seats. Those of us who are season ticket holders and donors and go to the games tend to think about these things.
 
thwg said:
wow, has there ever been a more smug, arrogant poster than ncjacket? No speculation for you in life as you've got it all figured out, right?

One would think if you wanted to take the time to respond you might comment on whether or not the Tech fund will create under priced "good" seats. Those of us who are season ticket holders and donors and go to the games tend to think about these things.
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I'm a season ticket holder, donor, and go to games.

I don't think about these things. :D
 
Results will be interesting...

For all the people that are cancelling seats, is there a possibility that other alums who had previously not purchased seats because they couldnt get good ones will now step up to the plate? This could especially be true for younger alums. My first two years out of school I didnt puchase season tickets. I couldnt get what I considered good seats because of point levels. Got some decent seats last year, and am actually upgrading location and number of tickets this year. I will be going from 2 to 4 tickets, and moving to a slightly better section (still only the $200 section). I will be very interested to see how many others do this.

Everyone is predicting this to fail, but I am not so sure. GT fans are cheap at times, but I think they love to get a value. Those people who were in "bad" seats before now have the option to get really good seats for an extra cost. I think you will find many people requesting upgrades. Those that might decide not to renew their PSL seats will move to non PSL sections.

Only time will tell obviously, but I think the system is going to do a lot better than people on these boards are predicting...
 
I went down to the wire before deciding not to pay the $600 for three Section 109 tickets. Before blasting my non-loyalty to GT, hear me out.
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I'll blast away. There are sections that have lower (or no) PSL so it's obviously not a cost issue. You're just not willing to downgrade the seat location you've grown accustomed to (which is fine but don't make it sound like they've priced you out of buying season tickets).
 
Re: Results will be interesting...

SMoney said:
For all the people that are cancelling seats, is there a possibility that other alums who had previously not purchased seats because they couldnt get good ones will now step up to the plate?
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My season tickets have been in the "tax-free" section the past few years. Our group is moving up to the $100 section next year. So that is an extra $400 that Tech will be getting from us. I would have ponied up more money to get in a better section, but I have 3 young kids. We will upgrade again once the girls get a little older.
 
77Fan, You don't owe anybody anything. You've been a great fan and I'm sure will continue to be a great fan.

My seatmate's original reaction was 'screw it'. He comes from Knoxville, I come from Baltimore. I talked him into keeping them at least for next season (UGA).

I intended on purchasing more seats outside of the PSL's thinking he was going to be done soon (he'll have three kids in college, I'll have two). But then I saw that the application didn't allow the purchase of extra tickets...The program became extremely clear to me then.

As I've told many folks, Tech fans owe Tech absolutely nothing anymore. You are a profit center for them, nothing more. You owe nobody an apology.

My best guess is that Clough approved this program (which is also going to hurt their roll call) because he knows it's the beginning of the end for Div 1 athletics at Tech.

By the way, for the original poster, I believe it will get real uneasy around BDS when UGA fans purchase single game tickets in the PSL sections (in quantity). The barking dogs will be bad enough, but the guys sitting next to them who forked out lots of PSL money will be worse with their bark.
 
I'd been buying a pair of 2nd row 25 yd line season ticket from JTS over the past few years. Decided today not to re-up them. The decision hurts, but we've got to manage our finances.

/shrug, we'll buy some 3 game packages.
 
I've got an idea, hence the reaso for my post here

beej67 said:
I'd been buying a pair of 2nd row 25 yd line season ticket from JTS over the past few years. Decided today not to re-up them. The decision hurts, but we've got to manage our finances.

/shrug, we'll buy some 3 game packages.
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that has to do with me being both generous I hope most of the time and perhaps selfish some of the time (or at leastlooking out for my self-interests-is that selfishness?)

Anyway here's what we know:

The Tech Fund fee is causing me to spend more than ever for the right to buy tix. I dropped $3200 for 9 seat licensess last week. That was more than I should have paid but I figure I have one chance to sit on the 50 in the LW where we sat when i was a kid. so, i'm smarting from my "investment" and my wife's wondering about it....

Many licensed seats will go unsold becaus eof the fee. Even if it's only 20% (I'd guess it to be more like 30%-35%) then that's an awful lot of "good" seats that will be sold somewhere.

The only reputable thing to do is to sell them to donors. they could strike a deal with a big ticket broker and maximize profits but the PR on this would be so negative they might actually have the Hive Five up in arms.

Last year I sold 30 3-game packs to Hivers for face with no holding cost, service charge, interest, etc.

This season I assume with my fairly signifcant (for me) donation i will be able to buy the 3-game packs fairly early in the process.

So, here's my offer if this is allowed here:

I will buy 3-game packs for those of you who chose not to pay the tax/fee. You should be able to get lower sideline seats which may be just as good as the seats you gave up by not renewing.

Rather than pay the face value of the 3 game packs, you can buy them with a service fee, tax, etc. from me for say $50 more than face. I can get reimbursed for much of my fee and you get good, perhaps even better seats for a lot less (say 30% of what the fee and the season tickets would have cost).

I'd prefer to get as many GT seats in GT fans hands, especially those who for whatever reason chose not to renew because of the fee. My concern and frustration is if GT fans don't get them initially, brokers will which will drive up the price for all and increase the number of UGAGers in the good seats.

So, do any of you have an intersest in buying GT 3-game packs at a margin over face? If not, where might there be demand? I don't mind doing the work but I need to make something for it as last year required quite a bit of email, shipping, phone calls, carrying costs, etc.

If there is no interest from GTfans, then I have an ethical dilemma? I can list these things on StubHub for less work and surely recover my license fee but ost buyers i assume would be opponents fans.

Anyway, I'm trying to find a way for many of you to get good/great seats, fill the good seats with GT fans, and make a few bucks for my time and to recover my donation.

What do you think of the idea and is there any interest here? I don't/can't post on the Hive anymore where they sold last season so I'm not sure how to let those folks know of the idea.
 
77GTFan said:
I went down to the wire before deciding not to pay the $600 for three Section 109 tickets. Before blasting my non-loyalty to GT, hear me out.

1. I have had season tickets for 18 years while a resident of the Raleigh area - 820 mile round trip.
2. I am a minister. The moving of game times to 3:30 and 7:30 on twelve day notice has caused me to miss many games the past several years.I take almost all of my annual vacation for Tech football weekends. During the four years my son played high school football I bought tickets that I culd use only once or twice a year.
3. I made a good contribution to AT Fund after receiving a December letter. As my tickets are at about the fifteen yard line, I was originally told seats outside the twenties would not have the ticket fee. I was surprised by the $200 per ticket fee.
4. It is just a bad economic decision for me to add $600 to a season ticket cost when I can only be sure to make three of seven games this year - two vacation weekends and the Thursday game. I will be able to get good tickets for those games for far less.
5. I will continue to support AT fund, Roll Call, and GT. The $600 surcharge just doesn't make sense for me. I hope the calculations made by the staff are good ones, that most will pay, and I will be one of a only a few who does not.
6. If I want to get back season tickets next year, there is now no reward for loyalty over consecutive seasons. I can pay the amount I am willing to pay and get into the section of choice.
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I'll get you what you want. Please send me a message. If you want to make a donation in addition of the tcket price you can but we'll get you 3 game packs and hopefully they'll be as good as your former seats or better.

I'm buying some extras for a few ATL ministers and did that last year as well so they can see the good games at prices they can afford.
 
What do you think of the idea and is there any interest here?
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YES.

PM me and I'll get you my email. SWMBO and I still want to go to some games. We will miss being within a stone's throw (cough) of the action like we were in previous years, but want to be close enough to the field, for the games we *do* go to, that we can be loud as hell and fool ourselves into thinking our noise is making a difference on the field. If you can do that for us, you're our man.


Another thing I've been wondering - how many classes do you have to be enrolled in at Tech to qualify for student tickets / date passes? It could quite concievably be cheaper to become a student for a semester and sit there. Hehe.
 
I've predicted all along that there will be a glut of unsold tickets and these will be "dumped" on the market someway to avoid empty seats. It will be Christmas in November for dawg fans. But we won't know for sure until the GTAA publishes some seat license sale or ticket sale information (yeah, right) or until we get to the stadium on game day.

DRad has nothing to lose. He's packing his bags to go back to LSU in 2008 anyway.

I find it not a good sign that several people who were talking up this seat license deal decided not to participate...
 
I want to zero in on this passage here.

midatlantech said:
As I've told many folks, Tech fans owe Tech absolutely nothing anymore. You are a profit center for them, nothing more. You owe nobody an apology.

My best guess is that Clough approved this program (which is also going to hurt their roll call) because he knows it's the beginning of the end for Div 1 athletics at Tech.
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How are Tech fans a "profit center" for Georgia Tech? Private Corporations make profits to eventually give out dividends to shareholders. However, the GTAA is a non-profit organization and any "profits" are used to pay down debt or to take on new expenses. People are acting like all the PSLs are going straight to DRad's pocket.

And the Clough conspiracy theory is rediculous to say the least. They're looking to use Tech fans as a profit center, yet at the same time destroy the athletics programs which tech fans pay for?

Also, the word on the street is that the prime sections, chairbacks and the LW, are selling very well. It looks like Tech will do fine with the young people moving up to sections they were unable to before. It's just that the people moving up aren't all posting that they're moving up, unlike the people giving up their tickets.
 
beej67 said:
Another thing I've been wondering - how many classes do you have to be enrolled in at Tech to qualify for student tickets / date passes? It could quite concievably be cheaper to become a student for a semester and sit there. Hehe.
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Heh. Probably taking your comment too seriously, but there is some cut off of something like 9 hours to let you pay the athletic fee. In-state tuition runs about 500 dollars an hour, so you wouldn't get a great deal out of it. The seats are also in the endzone and date passes would be unavailable for the big games.

Hope you can get a 3 game pack. Hopefully, the Tech fans dropping their tickets will all get flex packs through their fans and NOT sell the UGA and Clemson tickets.
 
Hey, I just wrote a check for $600 that I wouldn't have otherwise. I also get to lock in on 30 yard line tickets, when i was sitting in the endzone last year.

The person i was sitting with in the end zone has picked up my two tickets.

I am not complaining at all.

And I think I'll be able to pick up 2 tickets for basketball as well and am willing to pay the licensing fee there as well. I have been on the basketball ticket waiting list for two years without success.

The TechFund initiative has been good for me...
 
I've always had a hard time reconciling the claims by many that Clough wants to kill Tech sports with the claims that we've overbuilt and spent too much on sports facilities. Seems that Clough can't make up his mind?
 
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