This weekend at Wrigley made something painfully obvious (though I admit this is not a groundbreaking thought) - our new athletic leadership will probably be content pricing our fairweather fans out of the stadium and effectively generating revenue by selling de facto home games to our visitors here in Chicago - which fans from Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska (and Indiana?) will reliably oblige.
I will admit, I am personally concerned about getting priced out of the new stadium. I have not taken my Northwestern degree into law or high finance. I can certainly go higher than the $400 per head that season tickets have cost most recently at Ryan Field (parking included), but I fear it will more than double, which may not be palatable to my co-STH friends who are not alums...and this is to say nothing about what appears will be even less parking availability since the golf course will no longer be viable. It's clear to me in the new marketing materials that they are subtly prepping us to bike or take the train to the stadium and enjoy the "gathering areas" around the stadium...which I now also imagine they will charge admission to access. I think visitors making a weekend getaway to Chicago will pay inflated prices for a one-off game (just like I/we do for bowl games). I don't think I can do that 6-7x per year.
Maybe this was inevitable - perhaps we could have priced Wrigley tickets at $1 for NU fans and there still would have been a sea of red, but I felt like Phillips and Morty understood how unreliable NU fans are and clearly built a strategy around getting purple in the seats, even at a financial cost to the bottom line. Either the new regime doesn't understand this (yet?) or they don't care what color the fan is wearing who buys the seat, as long as they pay full freight.
I will admit, I am personally concerned about getting priced out of the new stadium. I have not taken my Northwestern degree into law or high finance. I can certainly go higher than the $400 per head that season tickets have cost most recently at Ryan Field (parking included), but I fear it will more than double, which may not be palatable to my co-STH friends who are not alums...and this is to say nothing about what appears will be even less parking availability since the golf course will no longer be viable. It's clear to me in the new marketing materials that they are subtly prepping us to bike or take the train to the stadium and enjoy the "gathering areas" around the stadium...which I now also imagine they will charge admission to access. I think visitors making a weekend getaway to Chicago will pay inflated prices for a one-off game (just like I/we do for bowl games). I don't think I can do that 6-7x per year.
Maybe this was inevitable - perhaps we could have priced Wrigley tickets at $1 for NU fans and there still would have been a sea of red, but I felt like Phillips and Morty understood how unreliable NU fans are and clearly built a strategy around getting purple in the seats, even at a financial cost to the bottom line. Either the new regime doesn't understand this (yet?) or they don't care what color the fan is wearing who buys the seat, as long as they pay full freight.
