Ticket Confusion

[Fessor]

We sold every seat in the house except for student tickets. We were done on Wednesday prior to the game.
We can’t hold seats for students and sell them at the same time. Since the Christmas break students have been able to claim their tickets in advance online using their cell phones or computers. It is a very simple process and has worked very well. We did this so we would know how many are coming and who is coming.

IF students are claiming their tickets in advance and so you know how many students are coming, then why so much uncertainty about how many student tickets to release?

[Affirm]

Admitting I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Still, here are some ideas.
1.
A. Season ticket holders should be encouraged to offer their unwanted seats for an individual game back to the ticket office as late as 2 weeks (14 days) prior to any game, especially any game that is expected to be one of high interest/demand.
B. The ticket office then should proceed to attempt to sell each and every one of those, at face value; or even give them away to persons expected to favor Furman.

This has been tried before with our folks that have seats and are not showing up or are not using all of their purchased seats. We encourage them to email or give their tickets to someone else. It is a whole other can of worms to ask a season ticket holder to give you back his/her seats that they have PAID for. and to our most popular games or any game for that matter.
We have made progress in this area also, by getting more of our regulars to attend regularly.

You know, and I admittedly don’t. But still I question why it is so difficult (if adequate staffing numbers exist to do it) to ask for season ticket holder to return tickets they plan to not use for a given game 14 days ahead so you can offer them for sale and get the seats filled. (Or some other reasonable number of days in advance, more or less than 14). Can of worms? The person is VOLUNTARILY returning the tix, no strings attached, for the good of Furman. Sure, some people can give or sell their tix to someone else to use; however it is unrealistic to think that a majority of such ticket holders actually know someone who wants to and is available to attend and can coordinate with them to receive and use the tickets. It’s not like we have dozens of friends who want to go to Furman basketball and are available to do so on a given date and at a given time. The ticket office has a much better opportunity to match the unused ticket with a buyer. As I said at first, I may not know the difficulties, but this is my perspective.

[Paul C]

Quick story about tix....

I knew I was going to be travelling for work the week of Jan 21st and would miss the UT-C and Samford games. Given our recent success and limited ticket availability I didn't just give my tickets to the first people that said casually "sure, I'll take 'em"....I made sure they were committed, had been to FU basketball games before, were Furman Alums and had some level of interest in the program.

And guess what, both guys I gave my tix to were no-shows for both games. Frustrating.

[Jasper]

There is a good moral in there somewhere, Paul. Just not sure what it is.

[Bootie]

At the last game, a large youth choir of about 30-40 kids sang the national anthem. All those kids and their parents and leaders purchased tickets to the game to get in, totaling about 150 tickets. Many of those seats were in behind the goals. So, when Sally Soprano and Allison Alto are done singing the anthem, and not really interested in basketball, they run around in the mezzanine and other areas instead of sitting in their seats. Others may leave shortly after the anthem, with their 2 parents and 2 siblings, leaving their empty seats. So, that probably led to at least 100 empty seats last game because the people either a) left or b) were walking around playing or visiting. FU got money for the seat, but they can't make people sit in them or stay for the game.

Just pointing out a little detail that might not be considered.

[Paul C]

There is a good moral in there somewhere, Paul. Just not sure what it is.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink....

[Jasper]

Yeah. That works for me. Very profound.

[MidlandsPaladin]