GWhoops.com poster (and Colonial Hoops commenter) Thinker called the athletic department about the season ticket change - upper end zone seats are becoming general admission, so no reserved seats for season ticket holders. Here's Assistant Athletic Director Dom Perno's responses.
1) They should have explained the ticket policy change earlier and better;Most of those seem fair, though I don't agree with the change. Your thoughts?
2) Dom will propose to [Athletic Director Jack Kvancz] that a letter explaining things go out now;
3) The seating change was not done with the intent of raising money;
4) Hobbs and the school's main goal is to have people in all of the seats;
5) Because very few games are that crowded, they felt people would get to sit in their regular seats 90% of the time any way;
6) They couldn't reserve the first rows or any particular seats in the end zone because different people like to sit in different places - so there was no ideal place to reserve AND the Ticketmaster system makes it impossible to split sections up like that;
7) If people don't show, they want the students to be able to get into games - they felt there were too many games where students had to be turned away;
8) They do a number of group sales promotions - Gen Admission seating allows bigger groups to sit together - the reserved seating is like a checker board making it harder to get groups in;
9) The last thing they wanted to do is piss off loyal fans and they recognize that they did do so by not being more thoughtful about making the ticket policy change.
Comments
FURTHER, even if the Ticketmaster system won't let you split seats up like that, they could just create another "section" with in one of the endzones that is reserved seating for the system. I mean, the "Gold Level" seats don't seem to be particularly anything except the seats in the middle, how hard could it be create a little section for us?
THIRD how is this supposed to give a better opportunity for students to get tickets? If we as season ticket holders don't show up, whether it is GA or not, it isn't as if they can resell the ticket, can they? So if I can only make the second half of a game, I lose my seat now?
It seems to me if the ultimate goal is to have "people in the seats" then they could do a better job of not ticking off the people who do sit in the seats already.
I figure some free GW Swag is the minimum necessary to even begin making this okay.
Reposted my response w/a link here at my blog above.
http://thesoftlounge.com/blog/?p=244
Obviously I added the commentary.