b**j
发帖数: 20742 | 1 http://hamptonroads.com/2010/12/tech-may-lose-money-again-orange-bowl
Frank Beamer stepped off the stage after his postgame news conference follow
ing Virginia Tech's ACC championship game victory earlier this month when he
remembered something he had meant to say.
"Hey," the Hokies' head coach beckoned to exiting reporters, "be sure to tel
l our fans to buy their Orange Bowl tickets through us, not anywhere else."
Of all things to be running through the mind of a man who figured to be reve
ling in his team's third ACC title in four years, helping the school sell ti
ckets seemed an odd impulse. Until you consider the last time Virginia Tech
went to the Orange Bowl, following the 2008 season.
The school lost $1.77 million in unsold tickets.
That's a sobering fact in contradiction of the notion that there's big money
to be made in those Bowl Championship Series games with big payouts. The AC
C, like most conferences, splits the bowl payouts its teams receive among al
l league members. So even after receiving its share that season, Tech suffer
ed a net loss.
"There's not financial gain to be made," athletic director Jim Weaver said.
"The benefit is the exposure of your program. The system is what it is."
That system requires each school participating in a BCS bowl to purchase 17,
500 tickets to sell to its fans. Tech was only able to unload 3,342 tickets
to the 2009 Orange Bowl.
Which isn't to say the Hokies lacked for fans at that game. A large Tech con
tingent did attend, but many of them gobbled up cheaper tickets - and in som
e cases better seats - on the secondary market.
"When I see how many tickets we sold to the last Orange Bowl and then I see
how many fans we actually had there, it blows my mind," Weaver said.
Blame the national championship game that year for part of the problem. Fans
who wanted to guarantee a ticket to the title game, which was also in Miami
, had to buy a ticket to the Orange Bowl as well. Many of those tickets buye
rs wanted to see the title game and ended up selling the Orange Bowl tickets
at online sites such as StubHub.com for drastically reduced prices.
"It just killed our sales," Weaver said, "because we were selling them at fu
ll price. Our fan base is very prudent."
That seems to be the case again this year, despite Beamer's plea. The Hokies
as of Tuesday had sold about 6,500 of their allotment to the Jan. 3 Orange
Bowl against No. 5 Stanford.
Tickets purchased directly through the school range from $65 to $195. Early
this week, there were almost 1,000 tickets available on StubHub cheaper than
Tech's cheapest. They started at $29.95, with lower-level seats beginning a
t $50.
"It's tough to compete," Weaver said.
The problem isn't only pricing. Fans can often get better seats through the
secondary market - or directly through the bowl's ticket office. Weaver said
bowl games keep the majority of the best seats to sell.
The Orange Bowl has sold roughly 30,000 tickets to the game, in addition to
the 35,000 tickets for which Virginia Tech and Stanford are on the hook. Man
y of the schools' allotted tickets are for seats in the upper deck, corners
and end zones of Sun Life Stadium, while the bowl is selling a larger number
of lower-level and sideline seats.
"That is an issue that I and my colleagues, other athletic directors, have b
een fighting for the last couple of years," Weaver said. "We could sell more
of our tickets if we had better tickets to sell."
It's a system that seems set up to guarantee the bowl a profit while putting
the schools - for whom the game is supposed to be a reward - at risk of los
ing money.
"I don't know if that's necessarily true," said Larry Wahl, the Orange Bowl'
s vice president of communication. "Historically, schools have sold their al
lotments no matter where the locations were."
But those were games featuring two traditional powers with strong traveling
fan bases. The Orange Bowl from 2003 to 2006 featured match-ups of Southern
Cal-Iowa, Miami-Florida State, Southern Cal-Oklahoma, and Florida State-Penn
State.
Since then, the game has hosted Wake Forest-Louisville, Virginia Tech-Kansas
, Virginia Tech-Cincinnati and Georgia Tech-Iowa. In all those games, at lea
st one team brought a relatively small crowd. That means scalpers who buy ti
ckets to big events months in advance, hoping to make a profit on a high-dem
and game, end up dumping them cheap online.
Which in turn means schools such as Virginia Tech get stuck with a big bill.
So why force the schools to buy such a large number and eat the cost if they
go unsold? Is that really a reward for a great season?
"Again, historically you've had sold-out bowls and the schools couldn't get
enough seats," Wahl said. "If we sold 45,000 ourselves and only had 12,000 f
or the teams, then somebody would complain that you didn't hold enough back
for the schools."
The Hokies have been selected to three Orange Bowls in the past four years a
nd have yet to offer that complaint. Instead, they're forced to find solutio
ns to a relatively new problem.
Theirs has always been considered a fan base that "travels well," but lately
, those fans have been making their own arrangements. So for future seasons,
Weaver is considering selling some of the school's allotment at a discounte
d rate - to at least offset some of the losses.
"I don't think particularly the bowls would like us to do that," Weaver said
. "But that may be something that, as this thing continues to unfold, we hav
e to look more seriously at."
Tech officials have also discussed giving fans additional status points in t
he Hokies' booster club for buying bowl tickets directly from the school.
In perhaps the ultimate irony, Virginia Tech's official athletics website no
w features a link to - and advertisements for - StubHub.com.
"We felt like if we're going to be competing against the secondary ticket ma
rket, let's have somebody who's also part of our team," Weaver said. "So we'
re fighting against each other, but we're also working together in the sense
that they're a major sponsor."
He understands how odd that must sound. Like his football team's head coach
making a sales pitch just minutes after winning an ACC championship.
"It's a crazy situation," Weaver said. "I don't think anybody's ever figured
out a better way to do it. If they did, I think we'd all try it."
Kyle Tucker, (757) 446-2364, k*********[email protected] | c*******0
发帖数: 5247 | | b**j
发帖数: 20742 | 3 总结就是VT2008年orange bowl亏本1.77 million, 今年又要重演悲剧
【在 c*******0 的大作中提到】
: 谁给总结一下？
| p****s
发帖数: 3153 | 4 OSU在前年的fiesta bowl上也亏了，然后只能提升季票价格来补...
【在 b**j 的大作中提到】
: 总结就是VT2008年orange bowl亏本1.77 million, 今年又要重演悲剧
| c****g
发帖数: 37081 | 5 关键是ACC改了分赃的条例，所有银子一律平分。TNND, bowl越大越亏。日。
【在 b**j 的大作中提到】
: 总结就是VT2008年orange bowl亏本1.77 million, 今年又要重演悲剧
| w********e
发帖数: 962 | 6 还是那些independent的好呀，自负盈亏。
【在 c****g 的大作中提到】
: 关键是ACC改了分赃的条例，所有银子一律平分。TNND, bowl越大越亏。日。
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