Increase attendance idea

[Dutch]

I'm more of a professional Mai Thai kind of guy.

+1
me too.

[Dutch]

So, I was thinking, maybe the administration could allow recent grads, say 2 years recent, to attend games at a discount rate. This could boost attendance, and maybe peak enough interest into those grads to become season ticket holders. I don't know, just an idea.
It just saddens me to see our guys go out there and play for us and no one shows.

Well, I guess we need current students to show up first.

The "recent grads discount" is a good idea, but will never fly. Since his arrival, Steve-O quickly eliminated free tickets (and discounts, I think), under the theory that a more expensive ticket has increased value, and then will be in higher demand.

Pretty sure that explains why we now pay (er ... "donate to the Mustang Club") through the nose for the right to buy those tickets, and for Boulevard spaces.

recent grads get half price on season tickets for 5 years after graduation. and it did fly. pretty well actually to get younger folks to buy season tickets.

in regards to the MC donations, go ask your buddies at UT give to the TxEx's. we've got it easy. i'm not looking forward financially to what happens to seat pricing when we start to get some critical mass in there.

[PonySnob]

It takes a minimum of a $1,000 donation to the Longhorn Foundation to be able to buy OU tickets with your season tickets for UT ticket holders.

[San Antonio Mustang]

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread and I hope Tim sees it. I do think our fundamental problem in attracting people to the game is the presence of successful profesional teams. In virtually every market that has a porfessional team the colleges suffer attendance problems. The news meadia (particularly TV) spend the most time on professional sports and what time or space is left they spend on the big state schools. Because we have the profesional teams we will always be fighting an unhill battle. It will take crative idas and work with opinion makers to get the average Dallasite to think of us instaed of the Cowboys when it comes to football. I was very pleased that Turner and Orsini were able to sell the DMN and Mayor's office on the idea that SMU is important to Dallas and they should get behind our goal to get to a BCS conference. That is a start. We really need the support of the news media and the corporate entities which means all of the city and county governments and chambers. All of the ideas to get corporations to buy tickets for customers and employees are great. UT gives the top state elected officials tickets in the President's box - do we do the same for our elected officials and the publisher of the DMN and the owners of the TV stations, etc. All of these things we cannot control but we have to work at.

One other major thing that we do have under our control is consistently winiing. This past year was a prime example instead of building on the TCU win the team collaspses. People do not develope loyalty to a team when they never know whether or not it will show up. I am a prime example. I live 250 miles from SMU and it costs me $200 to $300 to attend a game. This year I had the time to attend the Rice game, but did not because I did not want to spend that much money to attend a game where my Mustangs fold up and loose to a second rate team. The possibility of SMU loosing to Rice should not have been a question. Instead I gave that money to the Mustang Club with the hope it will do more good than my being at the game. I will attend the bowl game and have no doubt that if the team shows up we will win, but I am concerned that they will not and it will be rout.