Final Four Student Sections

[Buckets]

They're giving student sections behind the basket this year for $20.60 for all three games, roughly corresponding to where the student sections are at the phonebooth.

Press release: www.ncaa.com/sports/m-mmc/spec-rel/032609aac.html

They correspond to FL 1-4 on this image: www.ticketsolutions.com/venuemaps/FordFieldNCAAHoops_all.gif

First, I'm impressed with the NCAA for doing this -- just wish that they'd done it earlier for the Hoyas trip. Secondly, the price per game for student tickets to the FINAL FOUR are cheaper than the per game prices for student tickets! For the exact same seats! Crazy.

[GUHoya07]

It's nice to hear that the NCAA is actual thinking about students and improving the atmosphere at the Final Four for once rather than just making money.

As for comparing this to student section prices for Georgetown games. Lets just say the NCAA can afford to lower prices like this, Georgetown cannot. You can't even compare the amount of money the NCAA has and the amount of revenue sources they have to what Georgetown has.

Georgetown needs to make as much money as it can from ticket sales to try and cover costs across the board for the athletic department. The NCAA could give away these tickets for free and be more than fine.

[hifigator]

I didn't view the link, but off the top of my head, I wonder if this was planned in advance or whether they are trying to sell tickets that they hoped to sell at much higher prices earlier, but haven't yet? In other words, is it a sort of "travelocity/orbitz approach" to tickets, as is used for hotel rooms?

[FromTheBeginning]

Bet all those empty seats at the regionals had something to do with it (unless this was out there for a few months already)

[FLHoya]

400 students per school too--that ain't bad. Can't remember what the number was in 2007. Good luck to the hotels that get to host those crowds.

Great idea. Another reason the NCAA can pull this off is b/c they went to the new seating design for Final Four venues. No more portable sections and/or a curtain--they now stick the court dead center in the football field and build sections down to it. As a matter of fact, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis--next year's FF venue--was designed with the new FF configuration in mind.

Amazing to think that this year's Final Four will break the old single game attendance record by about 5,000 (it'll be close to 70K...as a reference the attendance for the title game in 2007 was 51,000+).

So they've got some space/seats to work with. Actually, to be honest, if I'm envisioning the court setup properly based on what I've seen in pics/on TV...those student seats probably aren't that great a location. I think they're basically floor seats with no slope, so it's hard to see all the way to the court from the back.

As if anyone would care...I'd sit behind the curtain if I could get in the building. ;D

[LizziebethHoya]

The student sections look AWESOME on TV. Its what a college basketball game should be like.

[bubbrubbhoya]

The student sections were fantastic, but it's not as if the NCAA was bieng charitable here. Witness the NCAA.com branded t-shirts given to all the students--every time the camera swept over the sections, "NCAA.com" was all I saw. That said, if I had a chance to grab one of those seats, hell yeah I'd take it.

[LizziebethHoya]

Haha I didn't even notice that.

Now, what would happen if they made us replace our WAG shirts with that in 07?

[FLHoya]

Apr 8, 2009 20:48:15 GMT -5 LizziebethHoya said:

Now, what would happen if they made us replace our WAG shirts with that in 07?

If/when that ever happens, don't say I didn't warn you when they snuck the AOL.com logo onto the sleeve of the WAG shirts.

I think it looked great on TV as well--actually looked better when all four sections were there IMO, but I'm just a sucker for conference tournaments like the BET and like seeing the four sections.

One lame thing--how seemingly the ENTIRE UNC student section seemed to know exaaaaaaaactly where the overhead camera was and when it was panning over them, for maximum self-exposure. Yeah, we get it. Mom says hi back.

[hifigator]

Yeah, these "free shirt" nights aren't really all they're cracked up to be. It used to be that they would give out shirts that you would actually wear. I remember some of the Gator promotions by Coca-Cola and it was a pretty cool blue shirt with the orange Gator logo on the front and just a little Coke emblem on one sleeve. Now they'll give out some blue shirt with a giant Coke logo on the front and a GRU (Gainesville Regional Utilities) logo on the back, and absolutely no Gator anything other than the fact that it's a blue shirt. They also tend to go the cheap route now and have shirts that aren't all cotton. The bottom line is that A: I dont' want the stinking shirt B: I won't wear the stinking shirt and C: since it has that polyester crap in it, if you do wear it in Florida it really will be a stinking shirt!