Once the Bobcats take the field for their first home game Sept. 8, their goal is to bring the fans up from their seats and onto their feet. But until that moment arrives, Ohio Athletics officials have been successful in lining up fans to pack Peden Stadium.
Almost 50 percent more season tickets have been sold since this time a season ago, and Ohio has topped all of 2011’s season ticket revenue by 6 percent, as of Aug. 9.
The box office breakthroughs can be primarily attributed to the BobProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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ts’ record-breaking 2011-12 athletic campaign.
“I don’t think there’s any question that success breeds success,” said Ohio Director of Athletics Jim Schaus.
But that’s only part of the picture. Ohio Athletics has been working with a third-party company, Legends Premium Sales, and OU’s sports administration master’s program to build a more comprehensive effort to boost season ticket sales.
Legends, which partners with multiple professional franchises including the Brooklyn Nets and Dallas Cowboys, has a Buckeye State backbone, though based in Dallas.
Chad Estis, a 1994 graduate from Ohio’s sports administration master’s program and four-year basketball letter winner, is the company’s sales president and the Bobcats’ point of contact.
Ohio officials reached out to Estis earlier this year to see if he would entertain a three-way, third-party system at his old stomping grounds.
The system hasn’t reinvented the wheel when it comes to ticket sales but banks on what Legends has done with other franchises in the past. Dan Hauser, Ohio senior associate athletics director for external operations, said Legends is most helpful in implementing “support ideas and concepts they’ve had success with in the past.”
Those models have been put to rest by a group of three full-time Ohio master’s students that have been working with Legends and Ohio officials to maximize output.
“Legends gets, for a low investment, an incubator system where they get three quality people,” Hauser said. “And at the end of the day they have the first right to hire any of those folks.”
Ohio officials don’t categorize the relationship as a true partnership because they have not completely outsourced their ticket sales operation.
Hauser said it wouldn’t be financially feasible for the Bobcats to enter a full-scale third-party operation.
“We felt our revenue return wouldn’t be optimal to enter those partnerships completely,” he said.
When the trio of Ohio students is hitting the phones, they’re doing it from the friendly confines of The Convo under the direction of Chris Radford, Ohio assistant athletics director for ticket operations.
Before Radford made the move to Athens in 2009, Ohio had offered family season tickets for less than $100. Despite the Bobcats’ relative success since, Radford has shied away from raising prices accordingly. A family of four can attend each of Ohio’s seven home games for $126.
The department’s goal for 2012 is to average 22,000 for each of Ohio’s home games — not a stretch of imagination, he said.
“That’s better than any MAC school can do,” Radford said.
Peden Stadium attendance peaked in September last season when a listed 24,244 watched the Bobcats beat Marshall 44-7.
The ticketing department doesn’t set a season-long sales goal, but focuses on each game with the objective of selling out Peden’s 24,000 capacity.
Ohio’s last two home games are held on weekdays in early November. With the exception of last season’s “blackout” against Temple, it has been historically tough to fill the stands for late season games. However, because of Ohio’s transition to semesters, students won’t be battling finals preparation or Winter Intersession, which leads Ohio coach Frank Solich to thinking late-season attendance should improve.
“We play the last game — or two games, sometimes — without anybody on campus, caught between quarters,” Solich said. “That won’t happen now.”
jr992810@ohiou.edu
