Season Ticket Sales Count?

[jjlovecub]

I am curious between renewals and new sales where we stand up or down??I know the total usually comes out in August but I am hoping my experience is not indicitive of what is occuring overall. I have 8 tickets for football seats 1-4 and 9-12. I added 9-12 several years ago for friends or sometimes I give them to coworkers. Every year I put in a request saying if seats 5-8 next to me, or 1-4 in front or in back of me come open I want to move the 9-12 set. Well every year I am told no they renewed...until this year when I had my choice of ALL of them!!! So I took seats 1-4 in front of me as I figured that would be the best for conversations, etc. Don't get me wrong I am very happy to finally have my 8 together -  But these people were all long time season ticket holders and there before I had enough of a donation to move into that section. Just hoping the new conference isn't driving them away and hopefully they don't sit empty and I have some new Bulls fans around me! Anyone else add or move easily?

[WoolyBully]

Well, you may not be an isolated occurrence. I know of two couples, both holding four seats/per who dropped. You never can tell about people, though. If some were looking for a cheap excuse to drop their tickets, this would give them good cover. Oh, and both were OG, grandfathered into their respective sections. 

[Hem]

We were offered lower seats in our section as well...and we sit in the staff section :-/

[ctbrown24]

We only had a couple sets of seats open in our section (124). I had 5 people looking to add to our group and John Lewis let me know which ones opened after the deadline.

[SpeedyBull]

I have been slacking on mine, should have them paid by end of the month. 

[Dhambuc]

JJ I think it could be a mixture of things, I relocated my seats this year for personal reasons.  It could be that some did not renew their tickets  or they may be like me and needed to move or wanted to move to a different section.  I wouldn't assume that its all or mostly due to people Not renewing.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Dhambuc

[charsibb]

JJ I think it could be a mixture of things, I relocated my seats this year for personal reasons.  It could be that some did not renew their tickets  or they may be like me and needed to move or wanted to move to a different section.  I wouldn't assume that its all or mostly due to people Not renewing.

 

So you're saying they moved because JJ smells bad?

[Hem]

I doubt many would move from Jj's seats. Had the honor to sit next to him (and his son) with my father in law for the UConn Bball game...couldn't get better seats unless I had a jersey on and Heath was calling me in.

[Southshore26]

I doubt many would move from Jj's seats. Had the honor to sit next to him (and his son) with my father in law for the UConn Bball game...couldn't get better seats unless I had a jersey on and Heath was calling me in.

I think we're talking football here.

[Mike Stuben]

I might shed some light on this.

 

So, take my last year at USF .. there was just me and John, we each basically had half the accounts.

 

We would make emails and reminders to our accounts about the renewal deadline. Then usually right at the deadline (and sometimes before it) we would start calling unrenewed accounts and try to get them to renew. Some would renew, some would tell us they weren't renewing ... the vast majority would ignore the messages we would leave (if they didn't answer the phone and we left a message). We would keep calling the list over and over, often making 4, 5, or 6 calls plus maybe 10 email reminders. At some point the seats from the people who never returned our calls or replied to our emails would get opened up. There was no set date for this to happen. Heck, one year it didn't happen until late October.

 

During the same time, we would be working to do seat upgrades and relocations and adds. We worked really well together (including Angelo and other past sales people who moved on) ... in that, if season ticket holder X needed section 108 Row Z seats 21-24 to get all of his seats together, we would tell each other to make more calls to the person who had those seats and didn't renew, in hopes they would answer the phone and say yes or no ... so we could help or deny season ticket holder X.

 

I think I heard that unrenewed seats have already been opened, which would be the earliest time in the last 8 or 9 years. Possibly because of the new dynamic of having IMG selling tickets.

 

As a rep, I always wanted those seats opened up early as possible because it allowed me to help my clients who did everything right by renewing on time. Opened up prime inventory to sell new tickets and prevented people from assuming they could renew the thursday before the first home game. Plus, as soon as they were opened I could stop calling the accounts in limbo and work on new sales.

 

But to understand the counter argument, when you open seats from ticket holders who have not responded .. you risk losing people who might have renewed because their seats are no longer available for them.

 

Here is the strange timing of this. When the team is winning and tickets are in high demand, then we can open seats earlier because people are more responsive when they value the tickets more .... when tickets are plentiful and the team is struggling then people have less urgency to renew on time. So I would think this might be an year we didn't open seats until October.

 

Seat location is also a factor, someone who loves their seats fear losing them .. someone who has seats that they feel are easily replaceable may not have any urgency to renew by any school deadline.