If anyone says the game should be.......

[goon]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

I actually do wonder if not having a maximum capacity at CAS has hurt season ticket sales.

There are a lot of people from Sioux Falls (and Madison, and Watertown, and Huron) who come to between 1-4 home games a year but aren't season ticket holders. Why would they be when they know they can walk up and buy a ticket if the weather is nice. If the weather is lousy, they'll stay home.

I guess I just believe that there are a lot of people out there who would buy season tickets if there was a real incentive to do so. Salesmen attempt to create a sense of urgency. What's the sense of urgency for average SDSU fans (1-4 games a year) to buy season tickets?

I dont think season tickets are an easy purchase for many fans. We did this year because we could make every game. If not we would have ordered seperate game seats. Just becuase there is a demand does not mean they will all buy season tickets. If we could not make as many games no matter who we played would not be enough if we could not afford it.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

Not to mention the last thing Coach Stig wants to do in a big conference game is to give up home field advantage. We are building the program to be a perennial playoff contender, why would you want to take home field advantage away from the team for a game against one of your two biggest rivals? Also, considering we'll likely have NDSU/USD at home in alternating years, you'd be giving up your biggest non Hobo Day crowd of the year at home.


I admire your persistence SF_Rabbit_Fan, but you still haven't sold me and I doubt your idea would get very far with Mr. Sell or Coach Stig either.

I know its probably not very realistic, but I do believe that the possibility shouldn't be ignored, and I do hope that our athletic director (and USD's) don't dismiss it off hand.

If nothing else, analysis might expose some areas where we could improve season ticket sales in other ways.

[Rabbitden]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

Basketball season tickets are an entirely different animal. I think I watched every SDSU men's game last year, but don't have season tickets. Why? Because I don't want to get home at 11:00 on a Thursday night and get up for work the next day. Half my tickets would go to waste/be given away. I probably spent as much on fees for Summit TV and Jackrabbit insider as a season ticket would have cost.

I live 72 miles from Brookings and make it home every night at the latest by 10:30. This argument does not hold water.

[bub94]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

If you knew you were going to be off work, and the only way to see the USD game was with a season ticket, would you buy season tickets if you were also going to attend at least 2 other games in Brookings? Serious question.

No. I would buy single game tickets. I buy mine ahead of time so I don't have to walk up to the gate.

[91jack]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

I haven't read this whole thread but I don't see what a 22,000 seat stadium has to do with season tickets. SDSU sells about 15,000 tickets for some of their games already. When they play USD or NDSU, they could probably see about 18,000 easily. Probably more than that. You do have to remember that the student population is growing, too. If this game is as big as we're talking, SDSU could have 3,000 students there. This includes the band. Everybody that isn't even into football will want to be there. A couple years from now, SDSU will probably have 2,800 season tickets. I believe they went up this year without NDSU or USD on the schedule. They should go up more next year. Are you saying the SDSU football shouldn't be a family outing? If everybody needs a season ticket, it won't be for families. Lots of people don't make enough money to get several season tickets for their kids. Taking them to 1 game is expensive enough. How about bussing students. Most of them have cars but not all do.
I'm not saying SF is a terrible idea. If SF held 20,000, I'd like the idea a lot.

[Prairiehaas]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

[QUOTE=SF_Rabbit_Fan;163310]There are a lot of people from Sioux Falls (and Madison, and Watertown, and Huron) who come to between 1-4 home games a year but aren't season ticket holders. Why would they be when they know they can walk up and buy a ticket if the weather is nice. QUOTE]

I fit that catagory. The reason I buy season tickets is so I actually have room to sit when Couglin approaches capacity. You can get tickets to any game, but when the stadium gets more than 14,000 the bleacher seats are stacked like sardines.

Now, if you want to make the arguement that limiting capacity will promote season ticket sales. Well, that case is stated above.

I just don;t think holding a game in SF will add that many season tickets. People will skip because the game will be played again next year. And, after a few years this game may or may not be a huge draw depending on significance.

[jackrabbit1979]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

We have grown, no doubt. We are currently at 2200 season ticket holders and want to build a 22,000 seat stadium. That is a pretty big spread, IMO.

They aren't planning the stadium for what our season ticket base is now...it's planned for what it will look like in 5, 10, or 20 years. By the time the stadium is complete (J Sell said 2015 at the earliest on TV's chat this week) we could easily be at 5000 season tickets.

If all the SDSU fans can't get seats for a game at a stadium in Sioux Falls with a limited seating capacity, that will drive them to buy season tickets every year. Not just on years when the team is good, not just on years when USD comes to Brookings, but every year.

Or it could just piss off those marginal fans that don't have season tickets but still come out to support the team at Coughlin. Those fans are still important too, even if they don't have season tickets.

Were Brookings residents lazy when SDSU played Davis or Manhatten and they couldn't muster the time to drive to Sioux Falls to support "their" team???

Did you take a poll of the fans at both of those games and find out they were all from Sioux Falls. From what I remember at both games, I saw a lot of the same faces I see in Brookings each week - I would bet a large portion of both of the games attendance were folks driving to Sioux Falls to support the team.


I'm all for increasing our exposure in Sioux Falls, I'm just not sure this is the answer. I would think that even if these games are played on campus, we'll still draw a significant number of Sioux Falls folks. If the lure of the rivalry can't draw a Sioux Falls sports fan to Brookings or Vermillion to watch the game, I can't imagine another standard football game in the following seasons will.

Besides, the city of Sioux Falls has a fantastic opportunity to see SDSU athletics on display every March. I know it's not football, but if the appeal of that event isn't enough to make them think they should maybe drive up to Brookings to see another game, I'm not sure what will.

[Jacks99]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

SF should be out. Too many reasons to not waste time investigating.

The season tickets would be booted better by assuring a seat in the dome or even a decent seat in an overflowing or even sold out CAS.

Did anyone mention yet that many fans would treat this like Hobo Day and stay the weekend or at least overnight? It happened 10 years ago, I can assure you that.

Not that it should matter, but the downtown establishments (and city coffers) make mint on those nights.

The schools are only 2 hours apart!!!!! (or a 1hr drive from SF)

[NoVaJack]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

You were saying something about straw man...

Centre County, Pennsylvania (where Penn State is located) has 144,000 people. There are an additional ~382,000 in adjacent counties.

Not a straw man at all. In fact, you make the point. There are, what, 350,000 people within an hour's drive of Brookings? We're talking about filling a refurbished CAS that is one-fifth the size of Nittany Stadium. My point was in reaction to a post that questioned why build a stadium of 20,000 plus when Brookings is not that big. People drive hours to get to Nittany Stadium. Why think small?

[Nidaros]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

If the consultant thought it was a good idea then, what makes it a bad idea now? The legends of failure in Sioux Falls have been dramatically overstated, IMO.

I used to think the Sioux Falls Davis game was a flop, until I actually looked up the attendance figures for that year. There were 7239 people at that game. The average attendance that season for our home games was 6972 (even less if you take out Hobo Day and Beef Bowl). The next season, SDSU averaged 9652. All that growth can't be attributed to the Sioux Falls game, but I bet it helped (the next season was my first as a season ticket holder).

As for Manhattan, that game drew 2083 fans. The average attendance in Brookings that year was 2070. I brought multiple people to the Manhattan game who hadn't been to a game since the State/U days, and they all walked away amazed at the new level of competition (If I recall correctly, Andre Gilbert had multiple dunks that game). I think they have all watched at least 1 Jackrabbit basketball game with me since then, many have seen several.

Granted, neither of those games made money for SDSU, but they did expose new people to SDSU athletics and the level of competition. The SDSU/USD game at HWF would almost certainly make money and increase exposure.

If I implied that holding events in SF was now a bad idea, I apologize. I quoted Karr as a source of this concept. Back in D2, the thought of having a game in SF was never thought to be a good idea, and right now it still does not seem to work because the SF facilities are not better than those on campus in terms of capacity. If SF had larger facilities in terms of seating, then maybe this idea might work. I think for now the best place is to host a football game is CAS.

[Just in the crowd]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

If one or both of the AD's don't look into playing in Sioux Falls, they are doing the school, the fans, the students, and the student athletes a disservice.

We didn't go DI by following tradition. We didn't make the move to DI by doing what we'd always done.

Like it or not, if SDSU is going to achieve the attendance levels and success we all want, we need administrators who think creatively.

Want another assistant basketball coach, wrestling coach, etc, to make our teams competitive? That takes money, and IMO the Brookings area is about tapped out. SDSU needs the Sioux Falls market to fill the new stadium and make donations.

USD is nipping at our heels, and will gladly take that market if we let them. Their AD is aggressive and thinks outside the box. He said on the radio yesterday that he would consider having the game in Sioux Falls, at least every couple years. You better believe he will consider having other games there too. USD needs the Sioux Falls market even more than SDSU does, and they are going to make a play for it.

But at least we'll have one extra game played on campus as the good lord intended.

[Prairiehaas]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

IMO the way to increase season tickets sales is best assured with two actions. Assure the expectation of a win and improve the facility to present a strong gameday experience. Much has been done in both areas. More needs to be done. A new, modern stadium on campus will do more, long term, to increase season ticket sales than any one game, of even huge interest, in Sioux Falls can.

[SoDakJack]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

If the SFSA guaranteed each school 250-300k then I would start to be interested.

[thumper_76]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

If one or both of the AD's don't look into playing in Sioux Falls, they are doing the school, the fans, the students, and the student athletes a disservice.

We didn't go DI by following tradition. We didn't make the move to DI by doing what we'd always done.

Like it or not, if SDSU is going to achieve the attendance levels and success we all want, we need administrators who think creatively.

Want another assistant basketball coach, wrestling coach, etc, to make our teams competitive? That takes money, and IMO the Brookings area is about tapped out. SDSU needs the Sioux Falls market to fill the new stadium and make donations.

USD is nipping at our heels, and will gladly take that market if we let them. Their AD is aggressive and thinks outside the box. He said on the radio yesterday that he would consider having the game in Sioux Falls, at least every couple years. You better believe he will consider having other games there too. USD needs the Sioux Falls market even more than SDSU does, and they are going to make a play for it.

But at least we'll have one extra game played on campus as the good lord intended.

Ugh, if I have to hear this argument again I'm going to puke! How does USD or SDSU get the advantage by playing each other in sufu? They both will be there playing then, and both will get the exposure. Let them waste the home game over it. If you really think that playing in sufu is going to grab some extra fans from that area, then do it with a game that DOESN'T involve USD. Why give them some extra exposure there by paying with what will be one of our biggest draws of the year? You guys are thinking that if WE give up our home game its going to give us so much more exposure there and such a jump on them when they will be getting the SAME exposure in that area, because both teams will be playing there, both teams will be advertising it, and everyone will see both teams play. SO it ends up being a draw really, except the home team gets what would most likely be less money than they would for a normal home game (at least we probably would).

Add to this, how many casual fans do you think will go through the effort of having to look for what will be an EXTREMELY hard to get ticket, in a smaller lesser venue than CAS. It would pretty much be all SDSU and USD fans who would come to the game if it was in Vermintown or in Brookings.

The sufu market is a huge target, just play someone else there. Hell play NDSU there instead if you want it to be a huge game, but don't make it something our competition for that market can also gain from. NDSU isn't going to be competition for that market, UNI wouldn't, or MSU wouldn't. Those would be some games that a casual fan would have a bit easier time getting tickets for, and wouldn't give USD the exposure there that we want to get the upper hand with in that market.

But, in the end, I would rather it wasn't a conference game if we play there, I'd say that a UND game there would be a good one. Its a name that people in the area recognize, will raise interest, not sacrifice a home conference game, and most importantly, NOT give USD help in the battle for that market. /RANT

[JackJD]

Re: If anyone says the game should be.......

The poster "Just in the crowd" is a Bison fan, not an SDSU fan. He's just poking around to cause trouble as he's been known to do since he joined the board (he's also been banned several times).

I'm going to close this thread. There's already a thread in MVFC section about playing in Sioux Falls if people want to keep discussing that subject.