Today's Attendance

[wvGT11]

After the Duke Game what did anyone expect? Fans who bought season tickets to watch Dedrick Mills get dismissed and then watch Tech lose a Double OT heartbreaker that we should have won, and then watch the team play worse down the stretch (UVA & Duke) sold their tickets to Georgia fans!

What is interesting is that while I agree , other schools like Georgia or Clemson have a way more dedicated fan base and would still have those fans show up. Just the nature of the commitment issues we face

 

[Jophish17]

In the 80’s, UGA fans would buy season tickets to Tech games the years that COFH was at Grant Field, just so they’d have tickets to that game. Then they’d sell, give away, or trash the tickets to the rest of the games.

I'm sure this still happens, especially when the GTAA ran a marketing campaign promoting the resale value of season tickets.

I don't know how many tickets were sold by Tech fans (some, undoubtedly) but a lot of red was in seats that have otherwise been sparsely populated or empty all year. We "sold out" of season tickets this year yet attendance was consistently poor and ticket prices on the secondary market were low.

I can't think of a good way to prevent this either without also harming our ability to attract sidewalk fans.

 

[Animal02]

I'm sure this still happens, especially when the GTAA ran a marketing campaign promoting the resale value of season tickets.

I don't know how many tickets were sold by Tech fans (some, undoubtedly) but a lot of red was in seats that have otherwise been sparsely populated or empty all year. We "sold out" of season tickets this year yet attendance was consistently poor and ticket prices on the secondary market were low.

I can't think of a good way to prevent this either without also harming our ability to attract sidewalk fans.

I posted this in an another thread. Buying season tickets in a UGA home year has a large premium for first time buyers, unless you are alumni / staff. That premium is applied to the following year season tickets. It may sound harsh, and it may lose a few sidewalk fans, but I would rather see empty seats than all that red every other year.

 

[CuseJacket]

East stands looked about 60% Geoergia fans in my estimation. The challenge with estimating as others have pointed out before is that red pops way more than gold/blue/whatever our fans decide to wear. But if you were to look at the middle sections of the east stands, I'd say those were predominantly Tech fans.

I pointed this out during the VT game. Perhaps others have mentioned it relative to yesterday's turnout.

• We sold out our season tickets this year
• We had a max of 45k butts in seats at our second biggest true home game of the year vs. VT
• VT had approx 40%-50% of the east stands themselves

So what conclusions could be drawn prior to yesterday's game? A bunch of our season tickets were sold to Georgia or TN fans. It was likely that their colors would dominate the east and upper north stands.

It doesn't excuse GT season ticket holders selling their tickets, save from those who had out of town Thanksgiving plans, imo. And then who one sells them to is another matter altogether.

In any case, my reason for this post was to highlight that we were destined to fail the "keep the red out" campaign before the first game of the year was played. The majority of seats occupied by Georgia fans were likely sold by the GTAA and 3rd party ticket resellers, not GT fans. Discussing how we increase season ticket sales to GT fans (the bigger numbers issue) is different than discussing how we change the behavior of some sad fans who reacted to our late-season swoon.

 

[gtg970g]

In LW section 109 all the season ticket holders around me showed up. Problem is there are several areas around me which are held by season ticket holders who never show up and apparently sell to uGA fans every other year. While I appreciate their financial contribution to the program I would much prefer they donate their hard earned money to the AT fund instead of letting quality seats sit empty 5 games a year and then be filled with dog fans once every other year. The same thing happened when I was in 104 a few years back. It is not a sound financial investment to do this so I honestly don't understand the logic of what they are trying to accomplish.

That said I actually thought the club seats were less red than in prior years and there weren't too many inbreds around me in LW.

 

[GTFLETCH]

What is interesting is that while I agree , other schools like Georgia or Clemson have a way more dedicated fan base and would still have those fans show up. Just the nature of the commitment issues we face

The commitment issue has always been an issue for TECH from 1980 to present... It may have started when we pulled out of the SEC! Bottomline is that a program that averages 6 wins per year will have these issues. What cures this, winning and the culture of winning... we have yet to have 3 seasons in a row with at least 9 wins since 1951,52,53! We have had a few years with Ross, O'leary and Johnson were we had 2 seasons of 9 plus seasons but nothing sustainable.

This lack of winning culture and tradition is why is hard to overcome! If it was an easy nut to crack it would have been done already!

 

[LamboJacket]

Looking over to the east stands it looked like a full sea of red.

 

[northgajacket]

The commitment issue has always been an issue for TECH from 1980 to present... It may have started when we pulled out of the SEC! Bottomline is that a program that averages 6 wins per year will have these issues. What cures this, winning and the culture of winning... we have yet to have 3 seasons in a row with at least 9 wins since 1951,52,53! We have had a few years with Ross, O'leary and Johnson were we had 2 seasons of 9 plus seasons but nothing sustainable.

This lack of winning culture and tradition is why is hard to overcome! If it was an easy nut to crack it would have been done already!

Spot on.

 

[alagold]

What your comment touches upon is the question of whether we should have taken on the debt load to build that addition 15-16 years ago. How much better of a financial situation might GT be in had we not done that part of the addition?
[Some changes - lower east, lower north - probably had to be made, but did we need the addition that is now the upper north?]
But..., since we now have all those seats, yesterday's game, as one athletic event, generated more revenue for GT than any other single event all year.

good question ,but it sure was fun to see the "awbern dedicated upper deck north " at that first awbern/tech game be full at start ---and almost empty in 4th qtr! it was worth it that day , SWEET

 

[GTFLETCH]

• We sold out our season tickets this year.

 

[GTFLETCH]

Good Read

My take away is that our issue is we are a program with Stadium that is 5K to big...at 55K it look empty when 47K show up, but we haven't ever sold 45K in season tickets...ever...so if we had a 50K stadium we probably would not have this problem.

2009,..Coach Paul Johnson’s second year at Tech, when 35,209 season tickets were sold (did not include student tickets.)

NOTE-The athletic department began reporting season-ticket totals that included those sold to students and staff in 2015.

2015....following the Orange Bowl championship season and with Georgia, Florida State and Virginia Tech on the home schedule, sales reached 34,712. (did include student tickets.)
2016....following Tech’s 3-9 record in 2015 and a less appealing home schedule, the ticket office sold 31,789 season tickets.(did include student tickets.)

2017....Georgia Tech sold its allotment of 30,000 tickets and asked for 3,500 more, then asked for 1,500 according to Gary Stokan, President and CEO of Peach Bowl, Inc., and creator of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Games. Georgia Tech’s sellout of its season-ticket plan topped out at 30,467 packages. (did include student tickets.) Tech received an allotment of 35,000 tickets, and so the athletic department reached a point where it could not issue any more tickets for that game.

I also find it interesting that from 2009 to 2017 if you add in the 3-5K in student and staff tickets that it seem Georgia Tech has lost about 10K in season tickets or gameday fans. Not sure how many we had in 2008, so I am not to sure that I buy the "No one wants to watch Triple Option" as the reason. I think we expanded the stadium to big over it is the Coach! I really like the Vet Ticket program and wish Georgia Tech would focus on filling from the bottom up... Why sale section 218 row 45 season tickets when section 218 Row 27 is empty... Lets fill from the bottom up.... Just a Thought, and give the Vet Tix and other charitable orgs the higher stands just to fill up the games... I think we need a push to create more sidewalk fans, but that means using upper levels to do so like ( Section 217-219) IMHO every game but Clemson and Miami this year TSTAn should give away 10K to fill up seats and then try and provide the best gameday experience that those fans will want to come back!



Link
http://www.myajc.com/sports/college...season-ticket-sellout/sTQDbfHDdMvAmbvMTGOrRN/