Ticket Confusion

[Jasper]

Now that we have a winning and exciting basketball team on the court at Timmons, someone needs to get a handle on this ticketing problem. Yesterdays game was an indicated sell out for a few days before and there was even a sign out in front of the Duncan Chapel entrance at 10AM yesterday indicating the game was SOLD OUT. The box office was not even open. Yet at game time the arena was half filled. What's with that?
I don't think anything can be done about season ticket no shows (is there?) but I have a hard time believing all those empty seats were in that category. People on here have indicated that their student children were told the student section was sold out. That was not true. How about all the empty seats behind the basket on both sides? My son and his wife came up from Georgia and wanted to come with us to the game. I scrambled around for 4 hours trying to get seats and finally scored a pair at 3PM. Then they went in and saw the place half empty. It makes us look bush league. They are big UGA fans and smiled condescendingly at our inability to handle a crowd.
At least yesterday we put the ETSU fans behind their own bench. As someone mentioned on this board, last year they put the WC students right behind our own student section. Not smart. Lets fix it before we play them here this year.

[DungeonRealm]

Gotta get it solved!
I know multiple people that would have paid good money for those seats behind the basket yesterday, that entire section was wasted

[Paladin91]

Doesn't FU have the ability to open up more seats that were blocked off years ago when we couldn't draw? Timmons is an odd configuration - whoever decided on the final config knew nothing about basketball.

[apaladin]

I believe that we overreacted to the couple of games before Christmas when the students actually overflowed. That is not happening now, nowhere close. I think someone(maybe DC) said over 600 showed up. There may have been 200 students there yesterday(optimistic). Does anyone know how student tickets are handled? Do they juts show their ID? Do they actually have to pick up a ticket before the game. If they just have to show their ID, there is really no way to know how many will attend. When I got there yesterday I knew the students were not showing up as just a few were in the student section(Im a genius). As far as the other empty seats I don't know why season ticket holders don't show up. If you can't make it why not give them to someone or turn them into the ticket office. I sit at half-court. There were 5 empty seats(season tickets) right behind me. Even in the upper section there were empty seats. My they is a lot of these are group sales and/or giveaways. Some group gets 20 tickets and only brings 10-12. FU is the only school in America that can sellout a gym and only have 80 percent show up. Don't know what it is but something is definitely broken with our current ticketing process. The students need some kind of accountability with their ticketing. Instead of posting sold out signs everywhere including the web, why not sell at least 200 GA tickets the day of the game. There were plenty of seats available to accommodate that many early yesterday. There is also plenty of room for standing also. Sell them as SRO tickets but the them they are welcome to fill in any empty seats 10 minutes after the game starts.

[gman]

There were fans that arrived late too. I am convinced part of the reason for that is the crazy way the parking attendants direct traffic. I have a B parking pass. I usually go through the main entrance, entering my parking area from the football stadium side. When I got to the lot, I was told to turnaround and drive around the backside because there was no one to remove the cone. Remove what cone? I complained that was a just a few feet from my parking space. It did no good. I was not the only one blocking the road due to having to turn around. It was the craziest thing. My wife even complained, saying they should be making it as easy as possible for fans to park. It's not like there was 10,000 fans trying to find a parking space. It was so nutty, all we could do was laugh. By the way, there were people leaving Timmons that were unaware the game was "sold out." I noticed there are no tickets available for the Woffy game. I sure hope seats are filled with purple people.

[apaladin]

We are losing potential fans. At the very least we could sell GA/SRO tix to get people in the building. There is plenty of standing room. People could fill seats after it is obvious they are available. I noticed we didn't bother with a real attendance as we normally do. Just listed it as 2,500.

[MNORM]

There were fans that arrived late too. I am convinced part of the reason for that is the crazy way the parking attendants direct traffic. I have a B parking pass. I usually go through the main entrance, entering my parking area from the football stadium side. When I got to the lot, I was told to turnaround and drive around the backside because there was no one to remove the cone. Remove what cone? I complained that was a just a few feet from my parking space. It did no good. I was not the only one blocking the road due to having to turn around. It was the craziest thing. My wife even complained, saying they should be making it as easy as possible for fans to park. It's not like there was 10,000 fans trying to find a parking space. It was so nutty, all we could do was laugh. By the way, there were people leaving Timmons that were unaware the game was "sold out." I noticed there are no tickets available for the Woffy game. I sure hope seats are filled with purple people.

The parking attendants may be the most inept group we've ever contracted with at Furman. They seem to attack each game with zero planning.
The whole student/ticketing issue needs to get straightened out this week. If we're currently calling the game a sell-out but reserving 600+ seats for our students, expect to see many Wofford students both under the baskets and behind our students...which would be incredibly embarrassing. We should be planning some sort of raffle/giveaway to entice our students to be there EARLY. I believe this was part of the reason we drew 600+ students for the UNCW game.

[Jasper]

I believe that we overreacted to the couple of games before Christmas when the students actually overflowed. That is not happening now, nowhere close. I think someone(maybe DC) said over 600 showed up. There may have been 200 students there yesterday(optimistic). Does anyone know how student tickets are handled? Do they juts show their ID? Do they actually have to pick up a ticket before the game. If they just have to show their ID, there is really no way to know how many will attend. When I got there yesterday I knew the students were not showing up as just a few were in the student section(Im a genius). As far as the other empty seats I don't know why season ticket holders don't show up. If you can't make it why not give them to someone or turn them into the ticket office. I sit at half-court. There were 5 empty seats(season tickets) right behind me. Even in the upper section there were empty seats. My they is a lot of these are group sales and/or giveaways. Some group gets 20 tickets and only brings 10-12. FU is the only school in America that can sellout a gym and only have 80 percent show up. Don't know what it is but something is definitely broken with our current ticketing process. The students need some kind of accountability with their ticketing. Instead of posting sold out signs everywhere including the web, why not sell at least 200 GA tickets the day of the game. There were plenty of seats available to accommodate that many early yesterday. There is also plenty of room for standing also. Sell them as SRO tickets but the them they are welcome to fill in any empty seats 10 minutes after the game starts.

There were students entering as I was going in and all they did was show their ID. No wonder we have no idea how many will be there. If the Duke students have to camp out all night to get into Cameron Indoor with tickets, there is no reason for us to just guess. Turning away people willing to pay for tickets is simply ridiculous for this program. And yes, the parking attendants are horribly incompetent and can be rude as well. The whole thing is not acceptable. The game was on TV and yet people chose to come to the game, buy tickets, drink sodas and buy hotdogs and we make it difficult. If the guy in charge of ticketing and seating cant do the job, they need to get another guy. Let's make the game experience effort at least as good as the one the team is putting out

[purplehorse]

As the saying goes “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Well the system is obviously BROKEN! I agree with all the comments above. At a minimum the students should be required to sign up for tickets in advance, and then any leftover seats go on sale 24 hours before the game.

Wouldn’t Dwight be the person for someone to contact and help us get educated here?

Having all those empty seats in the student section makes no sense to me! What gives?

[JoeyFreshwater]

The challenge then becomes students reserve tickets and don’t show up to the game, essentially duplicating the same problem we have with season ticket holders having tickets, but not coming.

[gman]

The Sports Marketing Department sent out this tweet on Friday.

[MidlandsPaladin]

I don’t think we can or should change the process this season. But we can do everything in our power to get as many students as possible out for the Woffy game. And that begins will dispelling any rumors about a sellout of student tickets if all they have to do to get in is show up with their ID.

[JoeyFreshwater]

The athletic department already changed the policy once this year. Around Christmas time. Students register for tickets in advance now as opposed to just showing up and showing ID. coincidently this policy change was about the same time the student crowd decreased.

[MidlandsPaladin]

The athletic department already changed the policy once this year. Around Christmas time. Students register for tickets in advance now as opposed to just showing up and showing ID. coincidently this policy change was about the same time the student crowd decreased.

Well there you go. If I know anything, I know that college students are creatures of habit. You can’t change the process mid-stream and expect a better result.

[gman]

The athletic department already changed the policy once this year. Around Christmas time. Students register for tickets in advance now as opposed to just showing up and showing ID. coincidently this policy change was about the same time the student crowd decreased.

Well there you go. If I know anything, I know that college students are creatures of habit. You can’t change the process mid-stream and expect a better result.

College students are creatures of habit? Yes, but so are most people!