Season Ticket Sales are Down
- Thread starter ok-cats-computer
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In the JP situation, it was a good thing as low ticket sales and fan displeasure FORCED mb to fire Joker. Any fan with any knowledge of the game knew Joker's teams were in a downward spiral with no chance of recovery. There is still hope for Stoops. However, the fans have learned a valuable lesson: We can force change. If the program does not meet our expectations, all we have to do is stop spending. Athletics is a business. Decisions are based on money. mb has already demonstrated he'll respond.
Patience, Grasshopper.
In Frank Beamers first three seasons he had one less win than Stoops has, although he also had one less loss and a tie, practically identical percentages. The next two years he broke even, and then he had a TWO win season his SIXTH year. Do you think Stoops would survive the next three years if he doesn't do better than that?
Then what happened, Beamer averaged 9.75 wins over the next 19 years, with 11 game regular seasons several of those years before his record started declining, still winning seasons. The term "microwave fan" comes to mind, (thanks mitch, LOL) although it was completely inappropriate to use it in mitch's case, and epic example of "foot in mouth" disease.
Stoops has assembled a GREAT group of recruiters under his leadership (he is the closer) and with the support of UK (FINALLY) I think UK has the FACILITIES and has assembled the coaching staff (a lot of it through trial and error, heavy on the error) to make UK a fixture in the bowl games, including the prestigious ones.
I think we will look much better this year, especially the coaching, and 17 will be a very exciting year.
Stoops is building the foundation for long term success IMO, and none of it comes easy in the SEC, we finished in the top thirty in the nation in recruiting last year and still were near the bottom of the SEC. I can't wait to see how this group recruits when we start having success on the field.
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Excellent post.
I am still amazed that UK fans expected us to compete with Florida on the road in Joker's first year when Florida's starters averaged OVER a 5.9 as commits. NOT just the O, and NOT just the D, but BOTH, And NOT just the starters,but all FORTY FOUR of the first AND second teams. FACTS that I looked up at the time.
Meanwhile UK had TWO four stars playing, both JCs, AND more two stars starting than three stars, and the two four stars starting was offset by having TWO walkons starting. And that dropped of drastically when you got to the backups.
JMO but Brooks did a fantastic job with the support that the athletic department gave him and I don't really blame Joker that much for not being a miracle worker, which is what he needed to be, People blame him for not going after some top recruits, but why should he have wasted his time, except in the occasional home state star-------and as recently as 2010 the whole state of Kentucky had ZERO four stars.
Switch to today, with great support (still think the COA will bite us in the butt, penny wise and pound foolish AGAIN) in 17 with a little luck KENTUCKY can start an OL that also averages OVER a 5.9 (traditional weak spot) and a four star at every other position on offense, and close to a four star on D. AND a lot of those four stars won't be starting because this staff has found even better underrated players EARLY in the process.
An AMAZING turnaround in raw material that will make our coaches look MUCH better, and with some on field success it will keep building.
Exactly.....we came within a couple of dropped passes/bad calls from being 7-5.
This year should be the year we go bowling and turn more than a few heads.
And how would Stoops be with 33 less recruits in his first three classes?
Beamer had to deal with a program on probation for recruiting violations from the previous coach.
You have to give Stoops 5 years but don't compare his experience here to Beamer's VT.
UK lost HUNDREDS of recruits because of the miserable support football got the first ten years under mitch (AND previously), PLUS effects of UK's probation lingered for almost a decade (bad records and poor bowls the biggest effect which also held down recruiting), while at Bama it just made recruits want to join because they had early playing time in a great program that they knew would come back.
Until UK got serious we had not gotten ONE commit from an SEC state that had an offer from Home State U. ALL were rejects from Home State U. We also had gotten ONE four star commit from our SEC recruiting base this century until Taylor (damaged goods, and downgraded?), and that was Yancy that wasn't really a four star. Later on Joker got a couple of recruits that were offered grayshirts, and neither did much. And I think both of those were probably by Tee, that admitted he LIED to recruits and didn't show them some of our facilities, just told them they were like the other SEC schools------think "recruiting room", a complete disgrace that made every coach that said UK wasn't just a basketball school look like a fool.
Although UK ISN'T just a basketball school and never has been, great long suffering fans. But sometimes it is hard to ignore what your lying eyes are telling you.
And yeah, we are still going to have a hard time convincing some poor players (that aren't selling to supplement their income, and most of them are already tied up by jurich's deal) that they can pass up a couple of thousand of FREE money a year because Lexington is so much cheaper to live in than Cincinnati, or Louisville, or Knoxville, or those high class cities in Mississippi and Alabama. I'm still wondering when Lexington is going to be flooded by people working in Louisville that can save money by living in Lexington and commuting to work. I spent 15 years commuting to work ninety miles away most of the time.
That whole thing is a joke, typical can of worms opened by the NCAA, and looks like UK's athletic dept is going to let that be the next thing that hamstrings recruiting. Most of our football players aren't going to be instant millionaires after a year or two like most of our basketball players, and while our facilities have undergone huge upgrades they won't be living in a penthouse like our basketball players-------and probably the Bama football players.
Until UK got serious we had not gotten ONE commit from an SEC state that had an offer from Home State U. ALL were rejects from Home State U. We also had gotten ONE four star commit from our SEC recruiting base this century until Taylor (damaged goods, and downgraded?), and that was Yancy that wasn't really a four star. Later on Joker got a couple of recruits that were offered grayshirts, and neither did much. And I think both of those were probably by Tee, that admitted he LIED to recruits and didn't show them some of our facilities, just told them they were like the other SEC schools------think "recruiting room", a complete disgrace that made every coach that said UK wasn't just a basketball school look like a fool.
Although UK ISN'T just a basketball school and never has been, great long suffering fans. But sometimes it is hard to ignore what your lying eyes are telling you.
And yeah, we are still going to have a hard time convincing some poor players (that aren't selling to supplement their income, and most of them are already tied up by jurich's deal) that they can pass up a couple of thousand of FREE money a year because Lexington is so much cheaper to live in than Cincinnati, or Louisville, or Knoxville, or those high class cities in Mississippi and Alabama. I'm still wondering when Lexington is going to be flooded by people working in Louisville that can save money by living in Lexington and commuting to work. I spent 15 years commuting to work ninety miles away most of the time.
That whole thing is a joke, typical can of worms opened by the NCAA, and looks like UK's athletic dept is going to let that be the next thing that hamstrings recruiting. Most of our football players aren't going to be instant millionaires after a year or two like most of our basketball players, and while our facilities have undergone huge upgrades they won't be living in a penthouse like our basketball players-------and probably the Bama football players.
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Not sure where you are going with the whole commute to work thing, plenty people commute to Georgetown from Louisville and far away as Somerset.
The recruiting room though was a blackeye, if they even spent the funds for small upgrades like that Coach Brooks may have hung around longer.
Spend a million on a basketball locker room but not a recruitment room for football.
UK football fans traditionally had been devout and filled the stands. I think they (administration) have expected the cash cow to keep giving milk while not feeding it.
While some spin it that we could been 7-5 last year, I see a team that should been be more talented/developed than to have UL-Lafayette and EKU take them to the wire.
The program needs a winning season this year.
The recruiting room though was a blackeye, if they even spent the funds for small upgrades like that Coach Brooks may have hung around longer.
Spend a million on a basketball locker room but not a recruitment room for football.
UK football fans traditionally had been devout and filled the stands. I think they (administration) have expected the cash cow to keep giving milk while not feeding it.
While some spin it that we could been 7-5 last year, I see a team that should been be more talented/developed than to have UL-Lafayette and EKU take them to the wire.
The program needs a winning season this year.
Different type Fanbase at UK ...people wanting to make noise when the team is on OFFENSE:football::football::scream::scream::smiley::sunglasses:
It's the 1st week of June. You are quoting the Louisville newspaper. I will withhold judgment on all fronts.
Very good post. However, expectations at VT when Beamer took over were much lower than they would be at just any major college program today. Hell, Oregon sucked under Brooks for quite a long time until he managed to turn things around. Right or wrong, in today's world, no college coach would likely get more than five years to show improvement; if not, he'll probably be shown to the door. In light of that, Stoops will almost certainly coach UK through 2017.
Back to the subject of thread title, I may go to a game about once every 2-3 years, largely due to time and budget constraints, so I'm in no position to call anybody out for dropping their season tickets. The fact that every game is televised makes it easy to stay home rather than drive 200 miles one way to catch the game live. Those who make the sacrifice of time and money to attend the games in person have my respect.
Well, if you don't trust the CJ, HERE is a Herald Leader story and HERE is another UK report. [winking]
UK has always been a little tricky about reporting actual sales, consistently reporting student season tickets in the total season ticket tally. It is certainly good to have the students there but student tickets are only $5/game and don't add much to the bottom line. What we see from the two cited sources is UK sold 38,658 "regular" season tickets (i.e., excluding student tickets) in 2015 and has sold 31,314 regular season tickets as of now. There will certainly be a few more "11th hour" season tickets purchases but the great bulk of renewals are done (priority renewals closed on APR 13th). It would be absolutely unprecedented to sell 7,344 "new" regular season ticket packages between now and the USM game. It would appear that season ticket sales are going to be dangerously close to the level of the great fan revolt of 2012.
Peace
Thanks. I see you are proficient with the content of our state's 2 biggest newspapers, both of which are desperate for readers. Neither newspaper has historically been supportive of Kentucky football. It's the 1st week of June. Our opening game is 3 months away. These articles are just teasers during a very slow time of year for football news. But I see that a lot of people have been sucked in.
It doesn't do anything for me. I have not held season tix since the mid 80s. But the "alarming" thing here is that season ticket sales are looking like similar numbers to CJP's last season. Of course, all of the luxury seats are sold and that is revenue that did not exist in 2012.
FWIW, I just saw the Golden Nugget released some win total lines and has UK at 5 wins. Personally, I think the Cats win 6 this year (maybe 7 ???) and think the over is a pretty strong bet here. But if Stoops fails to win 6 this year you have to wonder about fan support next year.
Peace
LOL! There it is. Although you will probably deny this now, your message appears to be that Stoops is headed down the Joker path. This is why you press the point. But even if Stoops ultimately fails, June, 2016, articles in the CJ and HL about season tickets are totally irrelevant. As I said earlier, these are just teasers from 2 bad newspapers at a very slow time of year for football news. If I was a HL reporter working the Kentucky beat, I would be writing interesting stuff now about the football camp Tyrell Ajian and a bunch of uncommitted prospects are attending here this weekend. But that would take some actual work.
Absolutely not. It is still TBD whether Stoops is headed down that path but fan support, as expressed by season ticket sales, is trending in that direction. Low ticket sales in 2012 did not get CJP fired, a 2-10 record did. I certainly concur that football in this state is not a 365 day discussion as it is in most SEC states but the ticket numbers are what they are.
Peace
Exactly, but this is the stuff the resident UL toady jumps on. Season tickets are nice but that's not where schools make their $ nowadays, it's TV contracts instead(Big 12 talking about $1B...that's one BILLION, in the not too distant future. Can the SEC be far behind?). Everybody wants full houses but that's not happening, not even at football juggernauts like UL.
As for HL/CJ, instead of searching for the latest 14y/o PG how about stories on guys reporting to UK for summer sessions? Perish the thought.
If you read either article, they compared ticket sales from the same (or earlier time of year too). Sorry, sales are down 20%. Joker actually had more season ticket holders his last year.
If season tickets are not a money maker for the school, why does UK keep raising the price? TV is obviously huge. But I think if you take the average ticket package and times it by 50,000, you will come to a significant number (even if its $500, that's $25 million. That is approaching the SEC Network payouts for the entire year). Please, they need to sell tickets.
Let me guess...you have season tickets the pizza pit? What a shocker that would be
A 2-10 record is not what caused mb to fire jp, it was the fan response to the record that prompted his response. While the two generally go hand-in-hand, there's not a soul on earth that can convince me that 2-10 would not have mattered had attendance at the last few home games been near normal.
Sorry to rail against you a little, but this is the kind of attitude that drives me crazy. You can't treat speculation as fact. Neither one of us knows what Mitch would have done at the end of the season if fan support hadn't fallen off as much as it did, so why cling that hard to something that is mere conjecture. Plus, whether or not fans have faith in the direction of the program should be a consideration in what action an AD takes. If fans are showing they still believe in the coach, then perhaps you give him an additional year unless you, as an AD, have no faith at all in his leadership. In that case, you might fire him in spite of fan support. In contrast, if you still have a lot of faith in your coach, perhaps you ignore fan opinion and give him an additional year if it looks like they have given up. In Joker's case, it may very well have been that the fans and AD were on the same page. We really don't know.
You're right but I have a feeling Eddie Gran and Darrin Hinshaw are going to make him look like a lot better game coach!
Not presented as a statement of fact. The issue with jp and mb was that many fans recognized joker wasn't going to make it at least one season earlier. Looking back on coaches, I recall Curci's early seasons. Though his teams didn't win a lot those years, there was something about how the team played that gave the impression that winning was around the corner. You can't quantify it, it's a feeling. Not sure yet about Stoops. He recruits well, as did Curci. He's not demonstrated he can successfully coach yet. All the same, fans have learned they have a tremendous amount of power.
As for mb, admittedly I'm not a fan. From the perspective of a Football fan, he spends too much energy on other sports.
The 2 are linked. The season tickets were sold before the 2-10 record was posted. What would have happened if the season went 5-7? IMO, no termination, so the deciding post season factor would have been record and not 2012 sales. JMO.
Yes. Four, ever since it opened. Fairgrounds before that. And back in the 70s and 80s I had season tix to UK (although I did not attend every game). Lots of Saturdays were UK in the afternoon, UofL at night (they played almost every game at night back in those days). There was 1 year I even split a pair of Bengals tickets with a friend but that was just too much and I fell back to my UK/UofL mode.
Peace
If fan support is trending in that direction, and I do not yet accept your conclusions about that, it would happen for 2 collateral reasons. For 1 thing, thousands of families in the Lexington and central Kentucky area are having to make tough financial prioritization decisions because the economic plight of most Kentuckians just keeps getting worse and worse. That's sad, and has nothing to do with Stoops. The 2nd reason is that a long term downtrend in ticket sales began during Joker's time here. Although there was a positive countertrend in ticket sales initially when Stoops arrived, it was largely based on unrealistic expectations that Stoops would just waltz in here and quickly put up 8-9 win bowl seasons. If anyone disagrees, I would just point them to posts at that time. Kentucky football fans tend to be loyal as a group, but most are basketball fans 1st. Many people will probably get pissed by this, but I see evidence here every day that a lot of Kentucky fans are still learning what it really takes to put a winning football team on the field. Many are losing their patience. When Stoops starts putting up winning seasons, some will come back. And there will also be a new market component of younger fans. This isn't a new economic phenomenon.
I can appreciate your POV Blue Decade....and to add.
I dropped my tickets this season... In normal times fans leave and new fans come in... These aren't normal times and haven't been for eight seasons... It's my belief that most all fans that have left since CJP aren't coming back as season ticket buyers... The W-L record, I'd bet, isn't the determining variable though it obviously doesn't help.... There are just way way too many other issues bugging fans, and they've been well documented on the board. None of my business how UK runs the program and at my age the money they've already pulled out of my wallet is more than they'd likely get going forward statistically, were I to continue to buy.... So perhaps the 50-60-70 crowd isn't all that important to keep happy, and the new money is where it's at??? Hell if I know. For me I'm done. Some of the shiz they're doing don't make a lot of sense to me.... Personally I'm not buying all the BS about "amenities" and "enhancing fan experience"... There is only about 3-4K people who benifit from amenities at a football game... Whatever the rest of us might get for our dollar is overrated/OMHO and way overpriced.
Any of you want a great fan experience in sport........... go to the Masters one time. It's not all about the dollar everywhere.
$600 to park for football games... What a joke.......
I dropped my tickets this season... In normal times fans leave and new fans come in... These aren't normal times and haven't been for eight seasons... It's my belief that most all fans that have left since CJP aren't coming back as season ticket buyers... The W-L record, I'd bet, isn't the determining variable though it obviously doesn't help.... There are just way way too many other issues bugging fans, and they've been well documented on the board. None of my business how UK runs the program and at my age the money they've already pulled out of my wallet is more than they'd likely get going forward statistically, were I to continue to buy.... So perhaps the 50-60-70 crowd isn't all that important to keep happy, and the new money is where it's at??? Hell if I know. For me I'm done. Some of the shiz they're doing don't make a lot of sense to me.... Personally I'm not buying all the BS about "amenities" and "enhancing fan experience"... There is only about 3-4K people who benifit from amenities at a football game... Whatever the rest of us might get for our dollar is overrated/OMHO and way overpriced.
Any of you want a great fan experience in sport........... go to the Masters one time. It's not all about the dollar everywhere.
$600 to park for football games... What a joke.......
Kentucky fans are fans of winning. When Football wins, there will be (has been) as much interest in Football as bball.
joker's fate was sealed, not due to season ticket sales, but actual butts in seats during his last season. (Though season ticket sales had been dropping prior to that) Ticket holders saw what mb refused to see, or at least act upon.
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Agree with stadium amenities. As a lifelong fan who has had season tickets for 30+ years, the so-called upgrades have had no impact on my enjoyment of the game. The changes may be pluses for some, but crap like internet service, chair backs, luxury suites don't interest me. It's Football. I'll attend if I have to sit on a wooden bleacher and get splinters in my fat arse.
IMO, the crowd to keep happy is a crowd they seem to have done nothing to attract...the next generation of fans. You can see the impact in their failure to appeal to kids simply by looking at the student sections. IMO, they need to set aside a few thousand seats per game and give them to kids and kids organizations. If they don't, in 10-20 years, crowds will be no better than half what they are now. 40 years from now there will be no need for Commonwealth stadium....maybe even Rupp. Kids have other interests.
It's not a problem in a bubble it is a problem in the making.
http://espn.go.com/college-football...-concern-students-show-college-football-games
http://espn.go.com/college-football...-concern-students-show-college-football-games
So, now it becomes obvious that not only must we win our opening game or we lose half our fans according to some but we must win one BEFORE the USM game to have anyone at that game.