Ticket Allocation: How do other schools do it?

[Sheffielder]

Here's my only problem with what we're dealing with at the moment: I have a party of four planning to go to Indy. Last night I received a mostly-pessimistic message indicating that I've got at least two tickets confirmed, but maybe/maybe not (probably not?) on the other two...with no definitive indication of when a final decision will actually be communicated. So maybe I should be looking for two tickets, or maybe four so we can sit together (in which case maybe I cancel my order and make another NU fan a little bit happier?), or maybe none because I'll get all four, or maybe I should un-invite two people because they're not gonna wanna sit apart...but your guess is as good as mine.

So what I want to know is...can anyone else confirm how do other schools do this? Is this the norm? If so, then it's stupid but I won't put the blame solely on NU. But for a school that was using dynamic market pricing a couple of years ago, I'm pretty frustrated at the moment by how this is all being run.

If it were up to me, I would have established a two or four-ticket limit based on purple points. If you establish four, then go in purple points order and fill the orders as requested until the allocation is exhausted...if that does not accommodate every STH (including me), then so be it...but at this point we would all know exactly where we all stand and whether or not we should be chasing after tickets elsewhere.

 

[zeek55]

Here's my only problem with what we're dealing with at the moment: I have a party of four planning to go to Indy. Last night I received a mostly-pessimistic message indicating that I've got at least two tickets confirmed, but maybe/maybe not (probably not?) on the other two...with no definitive indication of when a final decision will actually be communicated. So maybe I should be looking for two tickets, or maybe four so we can sit together (in which case maybe I cancel my order and make another NU fan a little bit happier?), or maybe none because I'll get all four, or maybe I should un-invite two people because they're not gonna wanna sit apart...but your guess is as good as mine.

So what I want to know is...can anyone else confirm how do other schools do this? Is this the norm? If so, then it's stupid but I won't put the blame solely on NU. But for a school that was using dynamic market pricing a couple of years ago, I'm pretty frustrated at the moment by how this is all being run.

If it were up to me, I would have established a two or four-ticket limit based on purple points. If you establish four, then go in purple points order and fill the orders as requested until the allocation is exhausted...if that does not accommodate every STH (including me), then so be it...but at this point we would all know exactly where we all stand and whether or not we should be chasing after tickets elsewhere.

I'm not sure how other schools do it, but this is a relatively unique situation.


The first ~5 years, the allotment was 15,000 tickets per school, and some schools had trouble with it (Wisconsin often struggled after their first time in the championship game to sell their allotments).

Iowa's sold out quickly I think, and Ohio State sold their allotments out as did Penn State; but the Wisconsin fatigue was why they reduced it to 10,000 since Wisconsin had that one 8 win year where they only sold a few thousand tickets (and then shocked everyone by winning that game).


Michigan will probably have a similar problem as us if they do win, so I'd imagine buying off Ticketmaster or a secondary seller now is a good idea.

 

[villox]

I wonder if they shouldn't have set the limit based on how many season tickets you actually have, and then sorted by points. They could also have accommodated "sitting together" requests quite easily - they're able to do this for season tickets already. It's a simple matching algorithm.

I have 2 season tickets, but requested 4 because I have 2 friends who want to go. It would be their first NU game of the season. Hardly seems fair for them to get to go (if I even get 4) over some other season ticket holder who already brings their whole family to the game.

I'm sure there's no truly fair way to allocate but people did make certain decisions on what they requested based on the notion that they could get 4. Just assuming you're okay with 2 instead (with no refunds, btw) doesn't seem quite right.

 

[RazzmaChas]

This whole thing has been handled poorly. My biggest problem is that they didn't follow what they said they were going to do. In 5 minutes you can come up with a fully- transparent policy.

• STH are eligible to request up to the same number of season tickets they currently have, with a maximum of 4 per order
• Tickets will be allocated based first on Tier/Giving Level and then using Purple Points within that Tier
• If your requested price level is not available, are you willing to purchase the lower-priced tickets? Simple yes or no question.
• Orders will either be completely filled or your money will be refunded

By the way, this is essentially how they allocate parking. Seems pretty simple.

I'm picturing the ticket office either running around thinking "oh no...what do we do now?" Or more likely they are waiting for a Friday afternoon bad news dump.

 

[its_the_sauce]

This whole thing has been handled poorly. My biggest problem is that they didn't follow what they said they were going to do. In 5 minutes you can come up with a fully- transparent policy.

• STH are eligible to request up to the same number of season tickets they currently have, with a maximum of 4 per order
• Tickets will be allocated based first on Tier/Giving Level and then using Purple Points within that Tier
• If your requested price level is not available, are you willing to purchase the lower-priced tickets? Simple yes or no question.
• Orders will either be completely filled or your money will be refunded

By the way, this is essentially how they allocate parking. Seems pretty simple.

I'm picturing the ticket office either running around thinking "oh no...what do we do now?" Or more likely they are waiting for a Friday afternoon bad news dump.

Why are you penalizing those STH's like myself who buy more than 4 ST's? Why shouldn't I be able to buy 6?

Not sure how this is really any different than what they implemented which was to allow most (if not all) STH's to buy two. If they implemented your system a lot of STH's who hold two likely would have been shut out totally (which would have prompted a different complaint thread from differen people).

Full disclosure, I only requested 2.

 

[RazzmaChas]

Why are you penalizing those STH's like myself who buy more than 4 ST's? Why shouldn't I be able to buy 6?

Not sure how this is really any different than what they implemented which was to allow most (if not all) STH's to buy two. If they implemented your system a lot of STH's who hold two likely would have been shut out totally (which would have prompted a different complaint thread from differen people).

Full disclosure, I only requested 2.

Sure. There could be disagreement about whether there should be a maximum or not in my hypothetical allocation methodology. Mostly I was trying to weed out the broker STH that control entire rows of 20 tickets or more. Look at the IL game on StubHub and you can see this in action.

My system would not make it any more likely for a STH with only 2 tickets to get shut out. If they were in a high enough tier and had enough points, they would get tickets.

The biggest difference is whether you make a smaller number of tickets completely happy or a larger number of people somewhat happy. NU took the latter approach.