New Ragin Cajun Army Episode: RCAF with Lee de Leon and Hans Malebranche

[Turbine]

Unlike baseball there is no real incentive to buy football season tickets.

When you have a 36k seat stadium and only 16-22k are showing up you don’t need to buy season tickets to guarantee a good seat. If we reduced capacity to 20k next year we’d sell 20k season tickets no problem. There’s a good reason why college and pro teams don’t go overboard on seating capacity. Scarcity sells season tickets. The upcoming renovation will hopefully help take care of this problem.

Also, for the past couple years for they have held sales and promotions where they sold tickets for really cheap to try to get people in the gates. That creates an incentive to not buy season tickets since chances are you’ll get a better deal buying them individually. I noticed this year that they are offering discounts on season tickets right now. Hopefully this is them realizing that they have to flip the script and make attending games cheaper per game if you buy season tickets, not the other way around.

Also ticket redemption for the last home game would mean you
never have to lose your investment.

[ManAboutTown]

I was super impressed with his answer about Houston and other big alumni bases. Sent him an email this afternoon to tell him that. We’re already planning some time after the bowl game to discuss strategies for Houston alumni involvement. Good stuff!

As support systems outside of the athletic department, this should be the #1 focus in 2020. Have to fix this problem.

[Turbine]

As support systems outside of the athletic department, this should be the #1 focus in 2020. Have to fix this problem.

You used "focus" and "2020" in the same sentence.

I'm seeing your vision.

[CajunRebel]

Also ticket redemption for the last home game would mean you
never have to lose your investment.

True. Or even better they could extend ticket redemption to any sport. If you miss a football game, you can redeem that ticket to see a basketball, baseball, or softball game. That might get a few football only fans into games they don't normally attend.

[CajunNation]

IMO, it's more crazy that we have a comparable amount of softball season ticket holders to basketball season ticket holders..

Like Lee mentioned, we have a very fractured fan base. In fact, we have 4 different fanbases at this University.

I can completely understand why the diamond sports season ticket numbers are so much better than basketball or football.

Season tickets to the diamond sports give fans a P5 experience from facilities to level of play to success against other major programs. Those fans ARE major program fan bases.

Those people didn't show up overnight. Both programs have P5 cultures that have been built over decades.

[CRAWFISH61]

The thing that I learned is just how much work we have to do to increase our fan base. Just 6500 season tickets in football is shockingly low.

[Cajunsmike]

The thing that I learned is just how much work we have to do to increase our fan base. Just 6500 season tickets in football is shockingly low.

It was over 10000 during the good years with Hud. Lots of reasons the number has dropped. Major one to me is that many of those were corporate and the energy slump continues in Acadiana. That has dried up money in which companies bought tickets for their customers and employees. All the money is going to West Texas.

[CajunVic]

I know a company that had 50 and no takers. Oh well.

[Cajunsmike]

I know a company that had 50 and no takers. Oh well.

Does that mean this company had 50 season tickets and could find no one to take them when they tried to give the tickets away. Prior to my local office closing and subsequent retirement, we had 25. I think the last year of those was 2015. Never had any trouble getting people to take them. That was prior to every game being on ESPN plus however. When people move on to other things, it is difficult for them to come back. Another economic point. Today's Advocate had an article concerning Lafayette Parish economic data. Oil and Gas contribution in 2018 was 50 percent what it was in 2014. Let that sink in. Once you do you understand why out support has dropped so significantly.

[CajunVic]

Does that mean this company had 50 season tickets and could find no one to take them when they tried to give the tickets away. Prior to my local office closing and subsequent retirement, we had 25. I think the last year of those was 2015. Never had any trouble getting people to take them. That was prior to every game being on ESPN plus however. When people move on to other things, it is difficult for them to come back. Another economic point. Today's Advocate had an article concerning Lafayette Parish economic data. Oil and Gas contribution in 2018 was 50 percent what it was in 2014. Let that sink in. Once you do you understand why out support has dropped so significantly.

Correct, your first sentence. And that was with free tailgate invites - booze and food.