Re: ECAC West 2012-2013 Predictions
Food for thought: We've more than doubled our season ticket sales from a year ago. Should be interesting to see if that will negatively impact attendance. Hopefully nearly all of them are full every game. The elimination of most free season tickets should help. Now, people are more apt to use their tickets now that they have to pay for them. There were faculty members that had tickets that they got for free and attended all of about 3 games all year. Plus the booklet flexibility could help as well because sharing tickets is a lot more convenient than it used to be.
According to the AAD a few weeks back, that doubling of season tickets sales amounts to about 2,000 sold, which leaves another 1,900 or so up for grabs on game-nights for the (traditionally) numerous walk-ups.
It's
those people who push UC's attendance to the top of D-3, not the 2,000 hard-core fans who will show up come hell or high water. My concern is that it'll be such a hassle to get decent, contiguous seats that many of the former group will just find something else to do.
Not a fan of the ticket booklet, either. Nearly 50% of that paper- those for the women's games -will end-up in the local landfill, no doubt about it... And instead of just having to carry a single season pass in my wallet for the winter, I now have to tear individual passes from my booklet for every single game. A minor point, yes, but this is not an improvement on the process IMO.
UC's argument is clearly specious: given that they've eliminated free passes, the number of season tickets sold would be the same whether or not they chose to deal with a user-unfriendly middleman or not. Either UC has been obliged to accept this arrangement, or they're getting some form of kick-back, or the powers that be are clueless.
I don't know why this is happening, but I'll be amazed if attendance averages 3,000 again this year.