Old Man Rant About Ticket Prices

[bamacpa]

I've been attending Bama games for 50 years now. I just got a Tide Pride email informing me I could request additional home and away tickets and the cost in some cases absolutely floored me. $ 175 for Wisconsin at home, $ 215 at Georgia...and $205 at Auburn. I guess I can almost understand Georgia asking such a number given their recent success but the Barn exceeding $200 ? Seriously ? CFB seems to view their demand as infinite and I'm not sure I agree.

I'm glad I already decided to cancel my Tide Pride after this year. I am fortunate that I could pay these prices if I wished but the toll of 14 hour gameday trips just isn't worth it to me anymore.

 

[mdb-tpet]

So that's $3.42 per minute of game clock time for Auburn, and if you consider ball in play time of average 11 minutes (average from the NFL), it's $18.63 per minute of ball in play time, and roughly a dollar per minute for seat time for a normal game. That's a lot of dough to sit far, far away from the action with 100,000 other people.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

I feel your frustration. But it’s a different system for funding collegiate athletics.

You have eight figure head coaches, another eight figures for on field staff, another $5M for non-coaching support, another couple million for the AD and staff, a million for the GM position that didn’t even exist three years ago, $20 million+ for revenue sharing with players, and not a penny of any of that addresses facilities or recruiting or simple maintenance on a $1Billion+ asset base.

We can all pine for pre-O’Bannon days, but we might as well yell at clouds.

Believe me, I’m reaching my financial choke point. But the reality is that if I (or you) give up Tide Pride, there’s someone else filling our spot in about a nanosecond.

No, it’s not the way it was when we were in school. That’s as gone as the T-Rex.

Pay up (a lot) or walk. It’s not an easy choice.

 

[dtgreg]

I feel your frustration. But it’s a different system for funding collegiate athletics.

You have eight figure head coaches, another eight figures for on field staff, another $5M for non-coaching support, another couple million for the AD and staff, a million for the GM position that didn’t even exist three years ago, $20 million+ for revenue sharing with players, and not a penny of any of that addresses facilities or recruiting.

We can all pine for pre-O’Bannon days, but we might as well yell at clouds.

Believe me, I’m reaching my financial choke point. But the reality is that if I (or you) give up Tide Pride, there’s someone filling our spot in about a nanosecond.

No, it’s not the way it was when we were in school. That’s as gone as the T-Rex.

Pay up or walk. It’s not an easy choice.

Price Discovery. I'm afraid it's going to take some real boycotting and General Striking to get some sanity back; not just in College Sports.

 

[AlistarWills]

I feel your frustration. But it’s a different system for funding collegiate athletics.

You have eight figure head coaches, another eight figures for on field staff, another $5M for non-coaching support, another couple million for the AD and staff, a million for the GM position that didn’t even exist three years ago, $20 million+ for revenue sharing with players, and not a penny of any of that addresses facilities or recruiting or simple maintenance on a $1Billion+ asset base.

We can all pine for pre-O’Bannon days, but we might as well yell at clouds.

Believe me, I’m reaching my financial choke point. But the reality is that if I (or you) give up Tide Pride, there’s someone else filling our spot in about a nanosecond.

No, it’s not the way it was when we were in school. That’s as gone as the T-Rex.

Pay up (a lot) or walk. It’s not an easy choice.

Wonder what ol Ed is doing these days.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

I've been attending Bama games for 50 years now. I just got a Tide Pride email informing me I could request additional home and away tickets and the cost in some cases absolutely floored me. $ 175 for Wisconsin at home, $ 215 at Georgia...and $205 at Auburn. I guess I can almost understand Georgia asking such a number given their recent success but the Barn exceeding $200 ? Seriously ? CFB seems to view their demand as infinite and I'm not sure I agree.

I'm glad I already decided to cancel my Tide Pride after this year. I am fortunate that I could pay these prices if I wished but the toll of 14 hour gameday trips just isn't worth it to me anymore.

Yeah no way would I pay those prices with the way the quality of play has dropped and with the roster turnover from year to year.

Those Gameday treks are brutal too and for the young.

I waited on the Tide Pride waitlist from 2007 to 2013 before I got tickets and I gave them up after 2013.

I wouldn’t mind attending a game here and there but it becomes a chore week after week when you can watch in 4K at home.

Again though these NIL payment amounts are not sustainable because fans aren’t going to financially support the funding with the dip in quality of play and roster turnover.

Boosters will eventually get tired of spending Millions with no on field hardware because everyone is spending Millions and only 1 team can win the NC.

$200 a game

LOL

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Yeah no way would I pay those prices with the way the quality of play has dropped and with the roster turnover from year to year.

Those Gameday treks are brutal too and for the young.

I waited on the Tide Pride waitlist from 2007 to 2013 before I got tickets and I gave them up after 2013.

I wouldn’t mind attending a game here and there but it becomes a chore week after week when you can watch in 4K at home.

Again though these NIL payment amounts are not sustainable because fans aren’t going to financially support the funding with the dip in quality of play and roster turnover.

Boosters will eventually get tired of spending Millions with no on field hardware because everyone is spending Millions and only 1 team can win the NC.

$200 a game

LOL

I had a good time in 2016 and 2017 going to (almost) all the home games, usually skipping the obvious wipeout games like Kent State, UTC, and 2017 Mercer. But go look at our HOME game scores for those two years; seriously, not one game I paid to see was worth a damn with the possible except of the Aggie game in 2016 (where Eddie Jackson's career ended on the field at Alabama). OK, 2017 LSU was okay but more frustrating than anything else. It was necessary to recover from my divorce, but I sat down and really looked at how much I was spending to come over from Dallas, and I wasn't getting the bang for the buck that I wanted. Figure tickets followed by either a 10-hour drive (no hotel usually as I stayed with friends) OR (more commonly) flew Southwest to Memphis and rented a car. You can probably figure what that ran; my favorite was to fly in on the morning of a Saturday night game and fly back Sunday morning. Now think how rare that actually was those seasons, when we had so many damn day kickoffs. Drove me nuts (that meant I had to fly in the night before).

 

[dWarriors88]

I'd rather take that money and stick it in an investment somewhere and forget about it.