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BCS Teams Struggling To Sell Bowl Tickets
Monday, December 23, 2013 11:20 pm
Written by: ThePostGame Staff

It's not just the teams playing in low- and mid-level bowls this season that are having trouble selling tickets. According to reports, several BCS-bound teams are struggling to get rid of their allotment.

Both teams playing in the Fiesta Bowl, Baylor and Central Florida, have returned thousands of unsold tickets from their 17,500 seat allotment. Baylor sold about 12,000 tickets while Central Florida managed to sell less than half of its allotment.

Perhaps more surprising is that Ohio State, a school whose tradition trumps both Baylor's and UCF's, is having a hard time ridding itself of a 17,500 ticket Orange Bowl allotment. According to the Toledo Blade, the Buckeyes have only sold about 7,000 tickets thus far.

http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/20 ... -allotment

TV has killed it. Along with third party sellers StubHub, etc. hard to believe Baylor couldn't sell that. Well to do young alumni base and first taste of the big time.

smusic 00 wrote:TV has killed it. Along with third party sellers StubHub, etc. hard to believe Baylor couldn't sell that. Well to do young alumni base and first taste of the big time.

Yep. And why buy the tickets through the bowls at a considerable mark up when you can buy them on the secondary market for way less? The schools and conferences are the losers and end up eating the costs of unsold tickets within this system. It's beyond me, why these bowls continue enjoy tax-exempt status. Also, why isn't UCF playing in the Orange Bowl?

A couple of observations (not excuses).

With the exception of Florida State and Auburn this year, the remaining teams had one or more let downs, whether a loss or two or a missed opportunity to play for much bigger stakes, e.g. Ohio State, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Oregon, NIU, Stanford, Georgia, Notre Dame, LSU, A&M, Clemson, Alabama, etc. Their fans are less motivated, as a result.

Second, the attendance is slowly eroding for regular season games, as well. Saturday afternoons were special events. You supported your team and there was little competition for your attention, since fewer games were available on TV and the idea that you might support a different (BCS) team as a surrogate was nuts.

Now, students enjoy expanded social events (such as the Boulevard), plus Friday and Saturday parties. These are the priorities, not actually attending a game regardless of your school's ranking or bowl bid. As for school spirit, it appears that is old school.

I don't think regular season attendance is dropping off at all. In fact, attendance increased last year. Stadiums are getting bigger and the top schools you mentioned are filling seats for conference and quality opponents. Attendance is sliding for a) weeknite games and perhaps morning games b) non-BCS games and c) creampuff games as it should-nobody gives a [deleted] about those games. The bowls games are suffering from anti-competitive market restrictions and conference tie-ins that do not allow bowls to pick and chose the most appealing product to present to customers. The New Orleans Bowl between Tulane and Louisiana-Laffayette will end up being one of the more successful bowls in 2013-ask yourself why?

B/c any excuse to get out of Lafayette and into the big bad N.O. is enough reason for 30,000 rednecks to attend the game?

Too many bowl games...they dont mean anything anymore.

Baylor has a bit of a reputation of not traveling well.

In 1984, a year after the heavily-Baptist city of Memphis had Notre Dame play a Doug Flutie led Boston college team in the Liberty Bowl the bowl was under pressure to invite Baylor and Wake Forest. They were going to bill it as the Baptist Bowl, only, mercifully, Wake lost in the last game to become ineligible and LSU got the invite, in part because they were needed to pick up the expected lack of ticket sales. Sure enough, Baylor only sold 6000 of their alloted 10000 tix, and the Tigers bought the unsold ones.

LSU had had a disappointing season and didn't want to go to the Liberty Bowl and played like it. Baylor took it seriously and beat them and afterwords Memphis had a saying about Baylor:

"They brought the Ten Commandments and the ten dollar bill and didn't break either one."

Apparently Arizona couldn't even spot their band some tickets.

http://arizonasports.com/45/1688458/Arizona-to-rent-marching-band-for-AdvoCare-V100-Bowl

I'm in Phoenix for the game (wife is an alum) and Baylor people are everywhere. I think most bought on the secondary market, which makes the article misleading. There were 7000 people at their pep rally yesterday.

yes - most can get better seats thru stubhub or secondary markets which leaves the schools s.o.l
we have read about this issue year after year.

ReedFrawg wrote:Too many bowl games...they dont mean anything anymore.

Exactly. When you have every Tom, [deleted] and Harry school with 6-6, 7-5 records going to a bowl they are not special anymore. Yes, there are exceptions sometimes, a school that has not been to bowl in many years.

leopold wrote:Baylor took it seriously and beat them and afterwords Memphis had a saying about Baylor:

"They brought the Ten Commandments and the ten dollar bill and didn't break either one."

LaVell Edwards said the same thing about BYU fans when they used to visit San Diego for the Holiday Bowl. However, he credited them with at least a $50 bill.