After a disappointing 2012 season, Auburn had a problem selling its season tickets last year, but surprisingly, during the SEC championship run of 2013 it had an even tougher time finding buyers for its final two SEC games.
A report from the Wall Street Journal this week detailed the Auburn athletic department’s trouble filling seats after the season started. With season tickets unsold and many vacant seats in the hands of scalpers and the secondary market, the Auburn athletic department reached out to its largest boosters to request they purchase the tickets.
The boosters responded well, buying up the majority of the tickets and filling Jordan-Hare Stadium last season against Georgia and Alabama. They bought them in bulk, buying 20-50 seats at once. One booster purchased 180 tickets to the two games on top of the luxury box he already had for the season.
“We had thousands of unsold tickets as the 2013 season started,” Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs said. “When supply exceeds demand, we have to move tickets. To that [end], we turned to our top donors, and they came through for us.”
But these tickets were sold to boosters at the face value of $95. Normally, season tickets require a donation and then the cost of tickets. By not charging market value for the seats at the optimum time – especially to the Iron Bowl, to which tickets were going for $1,000 a seat – the Wall Street Journal estimates that Auburn lost over $1 million.
Some schools — like Rutgers, Northwestern and LSU — have found success abandoning the “flat” ticket sales model in favor of a “dynamic” pricing system that allows the market to dictate ticket prices for different games. Under the new system, schools maintain control of the price of tickets and earn more than they would selling them at face value. Schools are also able to maintain control over who buys the tickets.
“Our goal is not to have empty seats at the stadium,” Auburn spokeswoman Cassie Arner said. “We especially don’t want any seats to be occupied by fans of other schools, including Georgia or Alabama fans.”
More than half of Auburn’s athletic department revenue comes from ticket sales, and the school earned $53 million from tickets alone. But even with this revenue, Auburn still finished 2013 with a deficit of $866,000.
While Auburn presumably had no issue selling its season tickets after last year’s title appearance, it appears that they could have been much more profitable by making a change in the way they sell tickets during the season.
For more details, check out the WSJ piece.
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