2010 Football Ticket Information and News: Paper Applications Mailed

April 13, 2010

As the football season ticket application process is in full swing, we would like to communicate and refresh everyone on the many processes involved concerning football tickets so each IPTAY Donor understands the process. Whether you’re a new or renewing IPTAY Donor, we think this is important information for this time of year. Please do remember the football ticket deadline is April 30, 2010 this year.

As everyone knows, we now have a program in which there is a minimum per seat IPTAY donation tied to the majority of seats in Memorial Stadium. Each IPTAY Donor that contributed the appropriate amount to maintain their seats is put back into the same seats as last year. Once all of the season ticket orders have been placed, the Athletic Ticket Office then prints out a report that lists each IPTAY Level and the report is sorted in descending IPTAY Point order within that specific level. The seating requests are essential each and every year when these are viewed in priority order. When making a seating request, each donor is encouraged to be very specific of what they are looking for and many times it is good to list a second or third request. Although seats do have to open up for this to become an option many times, someone that is looking for any type of a change should convey that either online or on the paper application when placing their order. Obviously, we always have more requests than the availability of tickets to satisfy seating requests. The Athletic Ticket Office then allocates seats according to the IPTAY Donor’s request for the 2010 season. Please remember that seating requests need to be made each year since they are not kept on file year after year. There are two critical things to remember at this point in the process. Many IPTAY Donors contribute more than what the IPTAY Seat Equity Plan set as a price per seat donation for other benefits such as parking privileges; and secondly, the number of IPTAY Donors that qualify for what would be considered prime seats, highly outweighs the actual number of seats in those specific prime areas.

Next, some common myths that we do hear from year to year are simply a myth. Many donors have the misconception that corporations control numerous amounts of tickets in Memorial Stadium, when actually less than 3% of our season tickets are allocated to companies or corporations. Some donors think that their requests concerning ticket changes or upgrades are not read and we hit the redo button. We do not have a redo button and every single request is read within the month of June and July. Now we may not be able to help everyone and I think this is where the misconception comes from, but we do have a system in place that we need to follow. Every seating request is important to us as many different needs and expectations come with every request. Each year, we do get the question that addresses transferring of tickets to another account. Almost everyone knows someone giving up tickets for whatever reason and each year someone that qualifies for them asks for those tickets. While we do understand that someone may qualify for those tickets, if we allocate those seats to that person, another IPTAY donor that may deserve the tickets before the other donor would be left out and in essence we would not be following our own policy. Even a face-to-face meeting with someone will not give someone an advantage since we have a policy that we adhere to. Lastly, many donors want groups of tickets together when they place their order. This is something that very rarely happens in Memorial Stadium. Even if sales are down, groups of tickets with four, six, or eight together just does not happen very often. If anything does come open, nine times out of ten they are pairs that open up which makes it difficult to accommodate a family of four that may need to have everyone together.

Again, every IPTAY Donor is provided the opportunity to maintain his or her current Clemson Football Seats as long as each person pays the donation associated to each seat location. Although, at this point in the year, we do not know what kind of year we will have concerning ticket sales. We will still uphold the integrity of IPTAY and provide a fair and equitable system of assigning tickets.

Soon we will have a grasp on what kind of year we will have with season ticket sales. Football season is only a few months away so let’s support Coach Swinney, his staff, and the players this coming year. Thanks for all the support through donating to IPTAY to help student athletes and the support you show through season ticket purchases.