The 1 - 4 and 101 - 104 sections are premium seating with a hefty contribution required. One seat in 1 - 4 works out to about $500 per year. To get that, you can't charge a single game price in the same section. That revenue model just doesn't work.

Bobcat Love, Steal? No. Use money for unintended purposes? That is what should be up for debate. Public Universities have tough times doing things that a typical business would do. Commissions for one. This is further complicated by how money is allocated(marketing per sport, student groups like O zone funds, ticket sales over budget, bowl game ticket allocations). In Drake's role You can either do two things.... coast through in a job you'll never get fired from and hope on court success raises attendance, or push the envelope to make things happen. Drake pushed the envelope and things were never better from a marketing and ticket sales standpoint. Drake also wasn't the most personable guy, so inevitably had some people not in his corner.

That's the story.

$500 spread over 17 home games, including the exhibition, is about $29 per game. Charge $40-$50 on a per game basis and it is at least available and it doesn't cannibalize season ticket holders.

The day people start paying $40 or $50 for a single game ticket in the Convo is beyond the horizon.

If that's the case, I'll start advertising my seat on here when I can't make a game this coming year.

In the past I've just given them away but if the ROI is as high as you state, I might have to think twice about that. :)

Alan, just as an example: I used to live in Cincinnati and would get over to Athens for 1-3 home games per year and always took Monroe Slavin up on his Bobcat Black seats (if I were lucky enough to win his silent auction). I'd be even more inclined to do something similar now that I live out of state. Maybe I'm in the minority in cases like this, but I'm sure there are others.

For the most part, you are correct; charging that much for single game tickets to the average Athens and surrounding county resident won't fly. But alums coming from other cities who want a good seat might.

How would you know? Seriously. Just because you say? You have a guy from Cincy saying that may be doable and you want to stick a fork in it before it even gets play. Typical.

It might seem upsurd indeed to someone here for 40 years. So does cable to someone under 30 that taps their phone and uses Venmo to pay 50 bucks for an unused seat. If they can get away from a great job made possible because of the Ohio degree. The one day trip and ticket is a justifiable expense. Would you rather they throw their money at the Bearcats or Musketeers because they did not want to make the trip to sit up in General Admission while the seats down low are empty? The market may be small but if the seat is empty, why not?

I don't know any "individual" entity,like a team or university that has its own ticket exchange.
They use a third party provider.

I know that the NFL Ticket exchange is handled by Ticketmaster.

The NCAA uses Primesport.

I know for the NFL,the purchaser gets hit with fees.

I just don't know if there's enough of a market to cover the costs of the service.

The only thing I have seen is where fans post available tickets on a section of fan website.
I've bought and sold Bruce tickets through Backstreets' "BTX" pages.

BTX does require that you can't sell above face and fees.

As this is my expertise and business will answer for you.

Depending on an in-house exchange is developed, it can actually be a very beneficial tool for teams. Acts as a sales arm for them while controlling the ticket all the way to the customer versus selling to a 3rd party.

Some schools sign deals with brokers or with an exchange. Some schools like ones we work with have us act as a buffer for their pricing so that a consumer cannot get a ticket for below a certain price and we tell them if a price point is not moving as strong as it should. As to an in-house exchange, Stubhub has been very aggressive the last few years in developing integration with the barcodes and the ticket system Paciolan for Stubhub. What this does is allow schools to post tickets onto exchanges themselves and resell them for higher costs than face value so that it teaches the customer that the school always has the cheapest tickets, even though millennials think that buying a ticket to an event means going through Stubhub or Vivid.

Some exchanges like Flash Seats set up their exchanges so that tickets have to be listed for X dollars minimum. Because of how small Ohio University is, developing an internal exchange is honestly not worth it. As someone who actually resells Ohio tickets now, the market has roughly 150 tickets on the market for every game for football and way less for basketball. Entry points for a reseller to buy right now do not make sense on the basketball side, as we used to have 20 silver tickets for a couple years until we realized the viability of profitability was nil.

Otherwise, only time you will see premium lowers hit the market is when the dept. actually puts tickets out there for resale. Otherwise, happy to chat on this topic in DM's if anyone wants to know more.

I wish more people would put their tickets on StubHub when they are not going to use them. I typically drive six hours to Athens once a season, always trying to get their for one of the most attractive Saturday games. I absolutely will pay $30 or $40 each for two really good tickets.