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How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/fau-owls/fl-fau-football-news-0915-20110914,0,887536.story
Season ticket sales have been lagging, with less than 5,000 sold. To meet its revenue goals, FAU needs to average 12,000 tickets sold for each game, and Angelos set that as a target for season ticket sales.


FAU has sold less than 5,000 season tickets in the last 7 months, and somehow needs to sell at least 6,000 more season tickets (or 30,000 individual game tickets) before the end of the season.

One marketing ploy is having Howard at Town Center Mall from 1-3pm this Sunday to help drum up ticket sales.

But what else can FAU reasonably do to help increase ticket sales — aside from start winning games?
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

Its all about perception.

Folks really have no desire to see who we are brining into the stadium this year for opponents. Most dont know who they are.

Winning as mentioned as well will do wonders.

I do hear the Florida Panthers advertising cheap lower bowl tickets all the time on the radio. Im not a hocky fan, but even I was tempted by the offer which was like 69 dollars for 4 games in the lower bowl.

The latter is the only thing that FAU could control and do. I think they have some cheap packages but one would never know about it right now.

I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick @$$ and I'm out of bubble gum.

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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

I believe that there are a lot of "low hanging fruit" around that would donate. As long as Athletics would open their eyes. If they would have marketed the 20 yard line to the 40 as. You donate 100 dollars to the owl club gets you into the priority club and alcohol and extra 150 gets you on the fifty price break out the sections as you increase to the 50. I bet a lot of people would donate an extra 100 instead of 250. I bet the Priority Club would be full and they would have how much extra dollars in their pockets not to mention the higher dollar concessions. Also utilize the area 210 110 to entice people to buy into the club level. I was amazed that they let roughly $45,000 in sales in prime area went to parents and families, about 20 rows at 16 seats per row in the bottom section of 210.

Also I'm not too keen on allowing companies to buy sections before Alumni and Boosters. I noticed a lot of areas when I went to pick tickets that were already sectioned off and reserved. I picked pretty early. The companies don't have the overall long term interest with the University and they should at least keep the people happy that will be there longer.
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

Win games, get students involved, focus on alumni, advertise to local youth programs, try to schedule teams with large followings for individual game sales.  The most important thing is to win, unfortunately its hard to get excited about a team that doesn't win.  I think its going to take a few more years of crapy attendance until we get a winning team that people can support.  Just like the Panthers or the Marlins, those clubs have to practically give away tickets till they have they make some noise in there respective sport.  Florida is full of fair weather fans, thats just they way it is. 
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

Battle Auburn and win BOTH away games gbefore the stadium opener, that is how we sell some tickets! Then win all 5 home games and one away game (FIU!) and be bowl eligible to build for next year when we won't have a new stadium to  show off.

Oh, AND HIRE LEACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

It's simple: win.
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

GeorgiaOwl said

Oh, AND HIRE LEACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lm77 said

It's simple: win.


These two things and we'll sell out nearly every game
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

Lm77 said

It's simple: win.
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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

In my mind, you can break it down like this:

Sports-minded people don't care about FAU because they know it's not one of the Big Three. Before and after the bodybag games, most of the media were saying derogatory things like, "It's just FAU." And that's how sports-minded people view us: we're "just FAU." We haven't won national championships, we've never played in a top bowl game, we've never had a Heisman candidate, we're not "giant killers" and we don't have a large following from even our own students. Sports-minded people know this about us. To them, we're as inconsequential as a directional school.

"They have a football team? I didn't know that. That's cute."

So how do you overcome that barrier? We'd argue, especially in light of anecdotal evidence, that sports-minded people can be persuaded to adopt FAU as a matter of convenience. Okay, you loved watching FSU games while you were in undergrad and miss it but now you're in Coral Springs? Come to FAU, tailgate, enjoy a college game again. But are we pricing these people out? I think we are. It's $170 to get season tickets ($160 + $10 athletics handling fee). Sure, they'd pay a lot of money for a Big Three game but this isn't a Big Three game. Would casual interest really be enough to get $170 out of people? I doubt it. I think these people are likely going to start buying single-game tickets and feel it out. If things go well they might get season tickets next year.

For non-sports minded people, it's the same issue but compounded. Whereas you could pitch to sports-minded people that "football is football, come watch live football", non-sports-minded people only care about it as a social event. Who is going, what's going to happen there, is it a party atmosphere, am I going to have a good time? If FAU had a reputation for a good time on Saturday, and it doesn't yet, then it would be an easier sell. That's for young people, mind you. I have no idea what retirees want except value and safety. That's why they like FAU baseball. It's relaxing and it's cheap. Do Boca retirees want to pay $160 and sit around loud, unpredictable crowds? I don't know. I know they do at UF but that's probably because they've been coming to games since they were 20. Here they haven't. It doesn't have sentimental value to them.

My only advice is to reduce the season ticket prices from $170 to $100 and push the beautiful facilities and per-game price of $20. This would make it much more palatable to sports-minded and non-sports minded people alike who have casual interest. From that point, try to sell 15k more season tickets at $100.

And don't rely on familiarity with Schnellenberger - to me that's an underwhelming marketing pitch. Any person could counter with, "He may have won a national championship at Miami decades ago but that's then and this is now when we're talking about tickets to see FAU and FAU's been underperforming for three years now." They're right. The magic was strong in 2007/2008. That magic seems to have faded and we've milked the good vibes as long as we could. To sell tickets on the idea of "Well, we won a bowl game a little while back" would be silly.





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Re: How Can FAU Increase Ticket Sales?

owlcountry said

In my mind, you can break it down like this:

Sports-minded people don't care about FAU because they know it's not one of the Big Three. Before and after the bodybag games, most of the media were saying derogatory things like, "It's just FAU." And that's how sports-minded people view us: we're "just FAU." We haven't won national championships, we've never played in a top bowl game, we've never had a Heisman candidate, we're not "giant killers" and we don't have a large following from even our own students. Sports-minded people know this about us. To them, we're as inconsequential as a directional school.

"They have a football team? I didn't know that. That's cute."

So how do you overcome that barrier? We'd argue, especially in light of anecdotal evidence, that sports-minded people can be persuaded to adopt FAU as a matter of convenience. Okay, you loved watching FSU games while you were in undergrad and miss it but now you're in Coral Springs? Come to FAU, tailgate, enjoy a college game again. But are we pricing these people out? I think we are. It's $170 to get season tickets ($160 + $10 athletics handling fee). Sure, they'd pay a lot of money for a Big Three game but this isn't a Big Three game. Would casual interest really be enough to get $170 out of people? I doubt it. I think these people are likely going to start buying single-game tickets and feel it out. If things go well they might get season tickets next year.

For non-sports minded people, it's the same issue but compounded. Whereas you could pitch to sports-minded people that "football is football, come watch live football", non-sports-minded people only care about it as a social event. Who is going, what's going to happen there, is it a party atmosphere, am I going to have a good time? If FAU had a reputation for a good time on Saturday, and it doesn't yet, then it would be an easier sell. That's for young people, mind you. I have no idea what retirees want except value and safety. That's why they like FAU baseball. It's relaxing and it's cheap. Do Boca retirees want to pay $160 and sit around loud, unpredictable crowds? I don't know. I know they do at UF but that's probably because they've been coming to games since they were 20. Here they haven't. It doesn't have sentimental value to them.

My only advice is to reduce the season ticket prices from $170 to $100 and push the beautiful facilities and per-game price of $20. This would make it much more palatable to sports-minded and non-sports minded people alike who have casual interest. From that point, try to sell 15k more season tickets at $100.

And don't rely on familiarity with Schnellenberger - to me that's an underwhelming marketing pitch. Any person could counter with, "He may have won a national championship at Miami decades ago but that's then and this is now when we're talking about tickets to see FAU and FAU's been underperforming for three years now." They're right. The magic was strong in 2007/2008. That magic seems to have faded and we've milked the good vibes as long as we could. To sell tickets on the idea of "Well, we won a bowl game a little while back" would be silly.







Excellent post. Some great points.

FAU - We got Bowls!
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