I received my email yesterday to renew my basketball season tickets for the upcoming season. As I began the renewal process I was disappointed to see that they have eliminated the Family Packages and all other reserved seating for the upcoming season.
I'm a bit upset in the way that the university has handled this. First of all I would have thought that it would have been nice to have had prior notification that this would be happening before receiving my renewal notice. There are several of us who have sat together for many years in the upper bowl and enjoy keeping up with each other's family, kids, etc as well as cheering on the Bobcats. Now, we're being told we can continue to buy general admission tickets and sit in the upper bowl if we want but there is no guarantee that specific seats will always be available. (Since some in our group travel from upwards of 2 hours away it isn't uncommon to occasionally run late for tip-off a few times throughout the season. Knowing that our seats were reserved and available was some reassurance.)
All of us in the seating vicinity bought the 4 seat Family Packs, though we only needed 2 or 3 seats at most and rarely used all 4 of the seats. The price was reasonable and met our needs and on those occasions where it was "Dad's Weekend" or some other special event we had a ticket we could give to a friend or colleague to join us or to a student's sib or parent.
Sure, we are told that we can check into getting reserved seats in the lower bowl. I'm quite sure the price will be much more than what we were paying for the Family Pack in the upper bowl. Considering how the Ozone has practically disappeared over the last few years and overall attendance is waning, one would think the Athletic Department would be thrilled to simply get "butts in the seats" at the Convo. Instead, without any prior notification, we find out our season tickets we have purchased for years are no longer an option and our only options are to take a chance and purchase general admission season tickets (we won't be purchasing 4!) hoping all of our groups can sit together or to dish out additional dollars for reserved seats in the lower bowl.
Nice PR move on behalf of the Athletic Department....nice move.

So...you wanted prior notification to your prior notification? Seriously, how else would you like to be notified. It's freaking July and you were informed - did you expect some kind of door to door, in person discussion? As far as the actual issue you're now faced with (I struggle referring to it as an actual issue) can easily be remedied. You do realize we NEVER sell out the Convo and it's usually about half full, at best. That means there are gobs of seats that you and all your friends can choose from to sit together. There, solved!

Didn't they do this for football too with the Family Packs? So why are we surprised?

But we’ve got a nice new video board

They didn't eliminate the family pack for football, they just renamed it.

It looks like the only difference for hoops is that they made the upper level General Admission. Not really sure why they couldn't just leave a section for people who wanted a reserved seat or just make season tickets the only way to get reserved and then single game sales are GA.

I’m pissed we no longer hand tickets out at Kroger

I'm extremely disappointed. I'm sorry, but in my mind, this is a bad business move by Ohio Athletics. As some said, some of us have had the same seats, next to the same people in the upper bowl for years, and have established relationships with those seat neighbors. I've had first two row seats in the upper bowl since 2011. I've sat next to the same guy and his wife (or son/daughter) since 2013. Two years ago, I added two more seats to make it easy to bring friends on the weekends, and also gave away tickets to people, or gave them to seat neighbors when they had the need. I'm pissed, and perilously close to eliminating my Bobcat Club donations and season football tickets already. While my donations aren't huge, if others like me feel the same way, this is a move in the wrong direction.

Out of touch doesn't begin to explain this move. Make the first 5 rows season tickets, charge a bit more than you have been charging for those people to retain those seats. It's not that hard - they're just not willing to try a different approach that's a little bit more complex.

It's a terrible decision to move to making ALL reserved seats donation required seats. Terrible.

If it's gonna be GA only, I'll go to two seats instead of six, one each for the wife and I, I'll quit giving BC donations, and give up football season tickets. If they're gonna treat me like they don't care, I can respond in kind, and use my fall weekends to go to a racetrack that treats fans like they're important to them. And, I can bring my beverages and snacks into the track from my fridge at home for free.

Now that I put it this way, maybe I should thank OU Athletics for making my weekends better. ;)

100% Agreed - this is how to destroy your base, and your brand. I can drive to UD arena, see a better basketball arena, and atmosphere, and drive 50 minutes instead of 85 minutes. The affection for Ohio University is the differentiation. But if you crap on me as a season ticket holder and alumnus long enough, I'll find other ways to spend my money and time. Things that are easiest to fix (and seemingly the most ignored) are game day experience, and ticket buying experience. Winning and losing is the most difficult of all those to fix because there's less control.


Something left out of this equation and conversation that I just noticed now:

The GA tickets in the upper bowl also were increased this year over last year. So they're taking away the reserved seat unless people give a required donation, taking away the seat neighbor relationships, AND they want us to pay a little more for it. Genius moves!

Welcome to the real world. I ain't getting 16 records and tapes for 1 cent, either.

We can't continue to expect students to subsidize these cheap seats, folks.

I don't disagree with your sentiment about student subsidies. It's my guess they'll be empty seats resulting in more student subsidies, with this ticket strategy. I'd have given more for the seats five years ago after the Sweet 16 year. In fact, I expected to see the increase that year. I became a Bobcat Club member that year even though it wasn't required. What I'm saying is that you can't sell someone on a general admin season ticket when for 7 years they've been getting that seat, as a reserved seat, and then ask them to pay more.

A better plan would have been to develop a few sections that aren't a donation section, with reserved seats, to allow those who can't afford to give $500 a seat the chance at being at games. It's better than them not being there at all. Give the people who aren't willing to drop the money on the lower bowl the chance to still have a reserved seat at a cost in between the gold seats, and the General Admin season tickets. It's not that damn hard to add a level to the seating options.

What is probably going to happen instead is that they'll lose a ton of season tickets in those sections. How many people are going to magically decide to upgrade to the lower bowl as a result? This is bad, bad business in my opinion.

If we lose a large number of ticket holders because they expect reserved seating for next to nothing, well, we need to rethink our investment in ICA entirely.

I finally got my "official" mailing today from the Ohio ticket office. I find it interesting when I look at the cost for "general admission tickets" this year that were "reserved seat tickets" last year. Last year I paid $32.50 per seat and purchased 4 in the lower area of the upper bowl. Now, Ohio ticketing is telling me I can have "general admission tickets" in the upper bowl for $40. What the ticket office failed to take into consideration is that I bought the family pack for 4 seats but rarely used all 4. I'd often offer them to friends or others needing seats at the games but more often than not only 2 (and sometimes 3) of those tickets were used. Since they've decided to increase the cost of those seats by over 20% from what they were last year I'll be buying fewer tickets since it is only general admission. I'm quite sure I would have paid the $40 per ticket this year had they still been "reserved seats" because we do/did enjoy our gameday experiences with our friends sitting around us. Not only did we talk about the Bobcats but we could and would talk about their families, grandkids, etc. Now that I have no guarantee of those reserved seats the ticket office is going to find that I will not be buying 4 seats this year, but only 2. So, instead of getting $130 for me for my reserved seats (or potentially $160 if the new price were in place) they'll get only $80. I honestly don't believe that this university can afford to take hits like this when it comes to ticketing.
This was obviously not well thought-out change by the ticketing office.