View from the Corner Office
11/27/2009 8:00:00 PM | Athletics
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. We are now in full swing with basketball with both the men and women off to a great start this year. I want to take this opportunity to address a few changes you might notice in terms of the game-day operations at Johnson Coliseum.
At the request of the coliseum and our new direction in ticketing, we are taking over the operation and ticketing for all the Sam Houston State events. You may have already seen some new and exciting changes. There is an increased presence of the Bearkat OneCard system to get students and faculty in quicker and we have opened more box offices. Also, we are defining entry points to better serve our fans and to handle a larger demand for basketball tickets. The coliseum staff always did a good job in managing our events, and we just feel with a few minor adjustments, we can make your game-day experience even better.
One of the biggest adjustments has to do with our reserved seating. Our lower level seats are still the same; however, because of an increased demand for reserved seats, we have opened up the lower part of section HI for reserved seating. That section will be made available for individual ticket purchases as well as groups, package deals and special promotional offers. As the basketball program continues to move forward, we will continue to make changes to accommodate our increasing fan base.
In order to protect our season tickets and reserved seating area, ushers will be making sure those areas remain reserved for ticket holders. We understand there will be times the section does not look as full, but as we move out program forward, those areas need to remain reserved to generate needed revenue.
We are marketing and selling our basketball program like never before and so far the early results have been positive. The response to the one dollar general admission sale was more than expected. For the eight nonconference games in November and December, we sold more than 1,500 advance tickets online. Those games are typically some of the more difficult games to draw fans to, so we were very pleased with the positive response to the promotion. We are going to continue to offer very fan friendly packages as the season progresses.
It is impossible to continue to fund our program at a championship level that they deserve without generating the necessary revenue, and we think the changes we have made are steps in the right direction. Hopefully you feel the same way and I look forward to seeing you out at Johnson Coliseum wearing orange and pulling for the Kats.
