Men’s Basketball Season Ticket Sales Surge for 2009-2010 Season

Oct. 9, 2009

Coach Oliver Purnell and his team are looking forward to another exciting and competitive season as the Tigers kick off with “Rock the John” Friday, October 16th, at Littlejohn Coliseum, beginning at 8:00 p.m.

The Tigers are led by All-American candidate, Trevor Booker, who leads the Atlantic Coast Conference in rebounding and field goal percentage. With an outstanding recruiting year and 9 returning veterans, the Tigers look to be as competitive as ever.

Certainly, one of the indicators to gauge how IPTAY Donors and Tiger fans have expressed their interest about the upcoming season for Men’s Basketball is to look at our season ticket sales and retention of season tickets. To date, we have sold a season ticket record of 6,200 tickets as compared to 5,300 last year, which is a 17% increase. Coach Purnell and the Tigers basketball team now have generated the highest number of season tickets in the last ten years. There are season tickets still available, so it’s not too late to order and get in on the excitement and enthusiasm that will occur with Atlantic Coast Conference competition in Littlejohn Coliseum this year.

Let me jump right into what many IPTAY Donors truly want to know.

Did I get my basketball season tickets improved or moved? Where are my seats going to be located since this is my first year purchasing season tickets? Will I get in the lower arena this year?

This year’s basketball season ticket renewal rate was extremely high with a 96% retention. Although we have had a significant increase in sales, this 96% renewal rate only compares donors that purchased prior season tickets last year versus this current year. With this renewal rate, only 200 seats opened up in the entire Coliseum. Most IPTAY donors want to know if they will end up in the lower level or if they will be improved within the lower level. This year, only 50 seats opened up in the lower level out of 4,000 seats that are available to donors (excluding student seats). Yes, that makes it difficult to improve seat locations and to secure lower level seating, a far cry from four years ago where you could get a pair in the lower level at an IPTAY level of $1,400. As with Football, our allocation process goes strictly by your annual IPTAY donation level and then IPTAY priority points within each level. We allocate seats within the system that the IPTAY Board of Directors has established. Obviously, 50 seats are not many seats to allocate and they were all assigned using our IPTAY system of level first, then points. Consequently, we were only able to help about 20 of our highest donors using the IPTAY priority system, which is not many at all. This also makes it difficult to improve current IPTAY donors at any level when the vast majority of seats available are in the upper level and the requests to improve heavily outweigh the available inventory.

This is a tremendous example of the support exhibited by our IPTAY Donors for our basketball program. We hope this explains the process and the limitations we have to work with to accommodate donor requests.

Littlejohn Coliseum has been considered one of the most difficult venues for visiting teams to play in, and with your support of season tickets, we anticipate this tradition to continue for the 2009-2010 season.

Go Tigers! Travis Furbee Assistant Athletic Director – Ticket Operations