Some Colleges Have Struggled to Sell Bowl Tickets

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In honor of its 14th consecutive bowl appearance, Georgia Tech offered $14 tickets to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., but still only sold slightly more than half of its 10,000-ticket allotment. Atlantic Coast Conference brethren Boston College, Clemson and North Carolina experienced similar struggles, falling between 4,000 and 5,000 tickets short of selling out. Virginia Tech, which lost $1.77 million due to unsold Orange Bowl tickets in 2009, fared worst of all, selling fewer than 7,000 tickets from its allotment of 17,500 for this year's Jan. 3 Discover Orange Bowl. "There are two groups of people who go to bowl games," says Zack Lassiter, assistant athletic director for ticket operations at the University of Utah and a charter member of NCAA Proactive Ticket Sales Professionals, a peer group that shares best practices. "Every school has that base of people for whom it doesn't matter who you're playing or where the game is, they're going to go. It's become their family's holiday tradition. There's the second group of fans for whom everything factors in - the opponent, the city, how economically they can travel to the game."

While Utah's fan base for bowls is growing, it's not enough to cover a given ticket allotment, according to Lassiter, who came within 1,000 tickets of selling out his 11,000-ticket allotment for the Dec. 22 Maaco Las Vegas Bowl against media darling Boise State. Virginia Tech's latest ticket troubles came despite Hokies' head coach Frank Beamer encouraging reporters at a press conference following the ACC championship game to "be sure to tell our fans to buy their Orange Bowl tickets through us, not anywhere else."

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