We have had some (minor) increases to parking and Youth tickets in the past few years, so this caught my eye:
Illinois decreasing the price of some football tickets
- Thread starter iujt2873
- Start date
In their case they probably felt they literally didn't have a choice... The few of their games I watched last Fall appeared to have been played in front of a near empty stadium...
I'm not against the move and would love to see us do something similar to rekindle the non-graduate family crowd that used come down from Indianapolis and the surrounding area in the mid-eighties..., but it seems the powers that be here at Indiana either take that group for granted or just plain don't care...
In my opinion, we need to aggressively target that group and in particular the family type with kids 11-5 years old...
Whatever it takes with that group... -Animals (Bison enclosure), badgers, gophers, stuffed wolverines, a worthless nut crushing walk way, etc..., carnival rides, football skills games on steroids (what we have but more and better,)... Cheap good food under tents (like we have but a couple more) for the non-tailgate family crowd... Free parking for families...,etc...
Literally make it such a Great deal and fun experience for the kids that'd they'd be foolish not to come... Even if we took a loss over three or four years it'd be worth it long term to rebuild the true Fan Base..
I'm not against the move and would love to see us do something similar to rekindle the non-graduate family crowd that used come down from Indianapolis and the surrounding area in the mid-eighties..., but it seems the powers that be here at Indiana either take that group for granted or just plain don't care...
In my opinion, we need to aggressively target that group and in particular the family type with kids 11-5 years old...
Whatever it takes with that group... -Animals (Bison enclosure), badgers, gophers, stuffed wolverines, a worthless nut crushing walk way, etc..., carnival rides, football skills games on steroids (what we have but more and better,)... Cheap good food under tents (like we have but a couple more) for the non-tailgate family crowd... Free parking for families...,etc...
Literally make it such a Great deal and fun experience for the kids that'd they'd be foolish not to come... Even if we took a loss over three or four years it'd be worth it long term to rebuild the true Fan Base..
Last edited:
Doubling the price of kids tickets is annoying. It feels like a cash grab. With 4 kids I’ve gone from $240 a year to $480. It’s not a huge deal financially to me but it’s annoying. Definitely makes me want to leave the 2 small ones at grandmas.
I didn't realize we did that... That falls under just plain stupid.... That's the one segment of the fan base you should be willing to take a loss on to get here...!
As a ticketing professional, the lack of a cohesive, creative and forward thinking ticket strategy at IU is befuddling.
Kids eat their weight in overpriced concession food. Let kids under 10 in free and charge $10 for 10 thru high school.
I've been a proponent of lowering ticket prices since ARE graduated as IU has rarely put a top rate product on the field. I also believe prices need to be adjusted throughout the stadium: upper deck, corners and end zones reduced ( not just in the "Candy Stripe" zone).
I've been a proponent of lowering ticket prices since ARE graduated as IU has rarely put a top rate product on the field. I also believe prices need to be adjusted throughout the stadium: upper deck, corners and end zones reduced ( not just in the "Candy Stripe" zone).
Thank God for the Big Ten Network contract. It continues to cover a multitude of stupid decisions made by our athletic department with regard to salaries etc. Doubling the price of tickets for kids? That's a new one to me.
But then again I guess tough decisions have to be made if you're going to pay Tom Allen $5 million a year.
LEO
But then again I guess tough decisions have to be made if you're going to pay Tom Allen $5 million a year.
LEO
I think they do that now. They have cheaper options in the upper corners of the west side.
I see the 80 year old marketing professionals that aren’t actually aware of much have reappeared.
Uhm.... I've alway thought you were in you're mid-to late 70's, at the oldest.
So fill us in and bring us up to date... Always looking to learn (if it involves facts)...
You can get season tix at iu for $180. Youth is half of that. That's pretty cheap.
I also like the pick three concept esp for families with kids that have other activities.
We have some of the lowest, if not the lowest, season and single game ticket prices in the Big Ten. Comparatively, our ticket prices are a bargain.
For one thing, IU has to revenue share tickets, even if they give them away for free, which is why kids cannot get in free. The Big Ten schools all agreed that there would be no free admission for football for youth tickets.
I must have missed the give them away for Free thread... That said., since you bring it up, anything from .01 cents doesn't constitute Free... We could price them anyway we wish...
Our prices relative to the rest of the Big Ten means nothing in regard to building our fan base and filling the stadium... The stupidity of using that excuse (our prices are already low compared to others) to not properly market to our needs is one of the primary reasons why we've rarely filled the stadium over the past 50 years...
Last edited:
The relative cost of tickets wasn't used as an excuse but rather to provide you pricing information of which you likely were unaware. Building a fan base is overwhelmingly a function of sustained winning, which is why some of us aren’t willing to engage in endless excuse making for the failure of our football leadership to accomplish that singular objective.
you sure it's not because we've sucked for most of those 50 years?
Let's use WBB as an example. People stayed away by the thousands until they got good. COnsistently good. Now they have 4 of their top 5 all-time attendances this year alone DESPITE tickets prices having gone up from $5 to $7 to $10 over the last handful of years.
Is that because of marketing? Or is that because of winning?
No good marketing professional is going to suggest giving your product away for free unless you don't want people to value your product. Affordable for kids? Sure. Free? Not a great idea in the long run.
As you say, winning drives interest, sustained interest puts butts in seats.
The relative elasticity of Admissions Pricing for all sorts of events drops dramatically with sustained interest (your women's BB example proves this).
You are also right you never give it away and promotions should be just that...limited promotions. Marketing is a short term fix and it is expensive.
My youth tickets have increased from $10 to now $20 apiece in the past few years. Still a good price but a steep increase in such a short period. Adult prices have remained relatively stable.
Weren't they selling tickets to the women's games for $1 for at least the last 2 games?
That's pretty damn close to giving them away. I know it's limited, but we don't have sell-outs without it.
This was for the Purdue game only and the 14k game (or whatever it was vs Iowa) was regular pricing.
I don’t know that but I wouldn’t have. It was posted that the WBB tix are now $10.
You obviously missed where I justified my idea of letting kids under 10 in free because the amount of money a parent spends on overpriced concession stand food at the game for said child still turns a profit.
$10 tickets for the best athletic team on campus? That is an incredible bargain and highly affordable for families.
Someone else posted WBB tix were selling for $1 just recently for this same team which clearly has been one of the best in the nation all season. Incredibly cheap, affordable tickets being used to help build a fanbase: what a novel idea!
Obviously winning, especially sustained wining, helps build a fanbase. But if that is the reason fans fill the stadium, how do you explain the football program with more losses than any other still has any fans at all?
By all means win! But until winning becomes such an afterthought make the tickets affordable enough to entice fans, especially young fans to build the fanbase of the future. Let's be honest, most of the IU football fanbase is probably 50+.
There’s a core group of ticket holders that will be there no matter what, but it’s pretty small given the number of alums within a hundred miles of Bloomington. Some also likely buy simply to preserve their points and seats for basketball, though that season ticket list has dropped significantly through the years.
As for our prices, they’re some of the lowest in the Big Ten, and it still fails to drive meaningful attendance. Not sure how much cheaper they can get. Consistent winning is the only strategy we haven’t tried yet.
So if the family can afford for the kids to stuff themselves at the concession stand, why can't they afford the tickets?
And I think you missed the part about where WBB tickets were $1 for a single game only. I happen to know this was because they felt pressure to sell out vs Purdue after Purdue sold out against us. They weren't 100% sure they could sell out the balcony at full price. Yet with the regularly priced tickets of $10/$5, they still got over 14k (I have that right, I think, but definitely 13k) vs. Iowa.
I agree 100% with your first paragraph. I also agree consistent winning has never happened. But you have to make prices affordable relative to your fanbase; not relative to your conference.
Chicago, NY, Washington DC, LA, etc. all have much higher costs of living than Bloomington. People make more money in those places. Is it proportionate to Bloomington? IDK. But you price tickets so families from Bton, Indy, Ft. Wayne, Evansville, Seymour, Richmond, Kokomo, etc. can afford to attend. Build the base.
Hear what you’re saying, but aren’t we comparable to Iowa City, Madison / Milwaukee, Lincoln / Omaha, East Lansing, Champaign, West Lafayette, and even Columbus, and likely not much worse than Metro Detroit / Ann Arbor and the Twin Cities? Most of those places price tickets based on demand, and demand is most reliably measured based on the quality of the “product”, which is the area we’ve consistently failed to successfully address. And we’re still cheaper than pretty much all of them.
Ah hell, charge $100 bucks a ticket and make the concessions all you can eat for free. Problem solved... 😁
I should add that while the Purdue game was a sellout at $1 per ticket, actual attendance was only marginally larger than the full priced Iowa game. They made tickets so cheap for the Purdue game that the people that bought them didn’t value them enough to actually use them all.
You don’t get varsity points for those tickets in the end zone.
I did. It know that.
One of the reasons to buy FB tix is to increase VC point totals especially for those trying to get BB seats or improve the ones they have
I would not do that
Agreed with you 1000%.
It is called creative marketing. Not targeted to add profits or develop red ink. The athletic department knows in real time where unsold seats are, way up high, corners, EZ, next to the band(?), wherever the data drives it. 72(?) hours before kick email every BBB, large hi-profile corp.(Lilly for ex., outfits with strong communication efforts in place), hospitals, HS's, City Halls and many, many other entities I'm not going to bruise my brain on to come up with. Offer damn cheap tickets. Be creative and proactive, 1 ticket for a $1 or a $5 ticket which includes a hot dog and Coke. Hell offer a $10 ticket which includes a 30%(?) discount coupon for a Pizza King pizza of your choice after the game. Seats unsold is a perishable commodity and can never be recovered no matter how much you're getting for the seats sold. Damn little effort needed for starting an email list and a few taps on a keyboard and damn little cost. Business schools and consulting firms are involved in these efforts every day of the year. Effort, start with neutral expectations and build on any and all success. KISS!
Last edited:
This is so big picture dumb that I don’t even know where to start but you’d certainly be training people not to buy tickets in advance if they know that three days before every game, there’s gonna be a mass sell off of available tickets.
And I can pretty much guarantee that any of those consulting firms you alluded to, or Kelley school folks would laugh at this notion
You make it very easy to understand why nothing resembling creative marketing is being done. You paid no attention to my (?) meaning everything is open book and can be adjusted. Something else you do not know is I've been in marketing and consulting for over 4 decades. You think shallow about fan growth until .500 and better ball is a norm for IUFB.
I'm stunned your services haven't been retained by IU Athletics.
Between 2002 and 2022, IU Football attendance has increased by 75%, from 27k to 47k last year. Attendance was even flat from a dismal 2021 to 2022, which was almost as dismal. And it wasn't because of awesome football being played. And price increases (beyond inflation) have been part of that time period.
To suggest IU hasn't done a good job (broadly) at marketing/pricing the product is just wrong, in my opinion.
Really? That’s interesting. I saw on my statement my football tickets get the bonus points because they’re non-discounted. I assumed that meant no points for candy stripe section.
Similar threads
