Bulls Ticketing Question for those in the know.

[mattegunz]

After reading the crappy season ticket sales story, I went on ticketmaster to look at lower level seats available for the Stony Brook game. Interestingly, there aren't many  seats shown as available.  See the tiny blue dots in the image below.

 

 

 

The lower bowl holds around 42,000. Excluding the student section and the ~14k season tickets, simple math says that there has to be more seats available than shown. Either that, or we've done incredibly well in single game sales, but don't count me as a Fake Newser who believes Joey Knight would leave that out of the story.

 My question to the former USF Athletics Staff members on the site is:

Does USF purposely limit the supply of tickets shown in hopes of making customers think they might miss out if they don't buy now? 

Thanks,

Go Bulls

 

 

Edited August 11, 2017 by mattegunz

[Brad]

Mike Stuben can probably help here.  

I think the seats they hope to sell as part of season tickets are showing as taken.  

[TheHorn]

Our season tickets are in 112 but I was able to buy 4 more seats for the Stony Brook game in 113. They are right in the middle of that section.

If the seats are marked as unavailable because USF is holding them in reserve, it seems a bit of a random scheme. 

[KB]

You can also pull up the same available seat view for season tickets as well.  You can maybe compare the two views to see if your theory holds. 

[mattegunz]

5 hours ago, KB said:

You can also pull up the same available seat view for season tickets as well.  You can maybe compare the two views to see if your theory holds. 

Unfortunately, the season ticket viewer only allows you to see the individual seats of one section at a time (the others are shown as a solid color). Nonetheless, your idea helped significantly.

As I clicked through the different sections I noticed a similarity:   all showed entire/nearly entire rows with unsold seats.  Further examination showed a unique pattern of each section alternating the unfilled rows.  For example, Going left to right across the E side of the stadium,  section 232 shows a complete row in Row R,  in 233 Row S is shown sold , however. 234 Row T is shown as available, 235 Row U is available, 236 Row V is available......

 

This is either one heck of a coincidence, or my hypothesis is gaining strength. 

[flsportsfan83]

The online version does not show all of the available season tickets. I was looking for aisle seats last year in a specific section and they were not available online. I spoke to someone at the ticket office and was advised that the public is not able to see everything available and he was able to give me seats on the aisle in Sect 115. Not sure what the reasoning is, but it was a practice at USF last year and I assume it still is. 

[Mike Stuben]

Sorry for getting to this so late. 

Here is what you have to remember. Season tickets are the lifeblood of the program.

So, first, you have to save plenty of good seats to keep selling season tickets. August is the busiest month of the year for sales, so there will be a last moment bump, there always is. 

Second, you also want to be careful what you do with the seats around your biggest donors. If a Bulls Club donor is giving $100,000 a year, they probably don't want a drunk 22 year old (not that there is anything wrong with be 22 or drinking) sitting next to them with seats they bought on ticketmaster. If a game isn't going to sell out, why risk it and open up those best seats and possibly alienate a big money donor. The big money seats are never sold as season tickets on ticketmaster, those come from dealing with people. 

Also, you have to hold lots of seats for non-season ticket things - players families, athletic staff and their families, cheerleaders and sun dolls family, all the extra game day people (like the anthem singer and the clock operator's mother). Often those are pulled from better areas. Some sponsor deals would call for X number of tickets to a certain game. So there are lots of used tickets that aren't sold as season tickets. I didn't even mention the visiting team fans. 

Also, any seat that was sold as a single game ticket can't be sold as a season ticket. So once a group or a single game seat is sold for any game, it comes off the season ticket map. 

Finally, (remember, I am now over 5 years removed from my time in Athletics) but we also had a debate about the value of those great seats, should we sell them at a higher price (like $200 a ticket). I said yes, others said no. I understand both sides of the discussion, but I don't know the current group's thoughts on this. 

So, that map looks right to me. 

Edited August 15, 2017 by Mike Stuben

[Paisa el Toro]

The moral of this story: contact USF athletics directly. Their ticket reps can provide you the best "intel" on what seats are available. 

[deadudea]

Attempting to buy tickets online does not show much available either. A few rows here and there, but that's it. I went through this last year (and I got negged to death because I complained about it), and even when I had called to ask, I was told "what's online is what is available, can't help you." But maybe you'll have better luck talking to a rep.

[Triple B]

25 minutes ago, Mike Stuben said:

Here is what you have to remember. Season tickets are the lifeblood of the program.

Can't be repeated enough ...