My disappointment is that the ticket office is not doing anything positive to reduce the ticket prices and helping to sell out the stadium. It is local businesses and donors that are doing the heavy lifting.
It’s not uncommon for donors and businesses to do the heavy lifting. And who do you think it is getting them involved? DIA and the ticket office that’s who.
As a fan, I get it, we all would like to see a sold out stadium. I’m sure the ticket office would too, but they have to look at it from a business perspective too. Revenue from ticket sales is a line item in the budget. If they give away revenue by reducing ticket prices for this game, unless it is made up by number of tickets sold it has to be made up elsewhere. Some would say that getting people in seats for this game will mean more ticket sales down the line. Will it? I really doubt it. Winning is what will do that. If Illini lose Saturday (I know, I shouldn’t even write that), do you think those who got in with a reduced ticket price are gonna say, well that was still fun I’ll buy a ticket for a future game at a higher price?
Ticket office is trying to do a balancing act between hitting revenue goal — not just for this game, but for the season and really future seasons. I’m sure they’re crunching numbers to see how best to hit goal and have as many butts in seats as possible for this game. One way to do that is getting donors and businesses involved. That’s not a bad thing. Their willingness to get involved means interest all around is heightened.
I’ll one other thing. As someone who was in fundraising, it is always better to approach donors and businesses on the front end when you have a good story to tell like help us get a sold out stadium, then on the back end to help bail you out of a deficit because you reduced prices on your own.