Iowa ticket office has RB tickets

[anon_i8nzeu2gbf0ba]

In an email today from Iowa:

"Please note that, due to returns, we have a limited number of tickets available. To order, please call 1/800-IA-HAWKS between 9:00AM and 5:00PM CST. Tickets purchased at this point will need to be picked up in California, either at the hotel prior to game day or at the stadium."

The ticket situation has turned out to be something of a fiasco. Not blaming anyone. It just seems there might be a better way.

 

[EpenesaEpenesa]

Returns?

 

[TheEnigma80]

Returns?

Probably people buying them and then realizing for one reason or another they're not going to be able to make it out to the game. I didn't know there was a return option available. Always thought it was if you bought them, you're stuck with them.... but apparently that's not the case here. Weird.

 

[Gridiron24]

Someone in California/Arizona will pick them up and spend a day in Pasadena.

 

[ICHawk95]

Every B1G school gets an allotment as well. I wonder if they go back to Iowa if the other teams don't use them?

 

[CadeHawk]

Ouch for sellers! More options in and already flooded market.

 

[CO_hawk]

Already cancelled my hotel and flights. A couple of days later found a ticket for $180, told them no.

Really ticks me off, that everyone was trying to screw Iowa fans over on pricing right off the bat.

Now it seems easy to get tickets, but yet a little too late for some.

I bought a Bose surround sound system and a German Shepherd pup instead.

 

[BleedingBlack-Gold]

"Returns" means that people bought tickets hoping to resell them on the secondary market. Now that the secondary market is flooded with tickets, they have to unload their tickets some how.

 

[DavenportHawk8]

There will be people out in Cali that will eat those up.

It will be a sell-out, there are tons of hawk fans out west and a lot of them didn't have tickets yet. I know a group that is headed out today and they are planning on scalping when they get out there. They said its worth the trip out there (they went in 91) and were so excited when the hawks were headed west again.

Sadly I can't go, due to work, which sucks.

 

[Mantyhawk12]

Big stadium. Lots of seats.
Hope IA has at least 40000 there.

 

[Pepperman]

Big stadium. Lots of seats.
Hope IA has at least 40000 there.

I'd put the number of Hawks closer to 55,000 - 60,000. The Hawks are going to be there.

 

[Pepperman]

Already cancelled my hotel and flights. A couple of days later found a ticket for $180, told them no.

Really ticks me off, that everyone was trying to screw Iowa fans over on pricing right off the bat.

Now it seems easy to get tickets, but yet a little too late for some.

I bought a Bose surround sound system and a German Shepherd pup instead.

The flip side of this is that many Hawkeye fans panicked. It is sort of understandable as most people couldn't possibly gamble and pay $800+ for round trip airfare, book a hotel for $150+ per night, and NOT have tickets in hand. This is perhaps the biggest game Iowa's played to date. The "what if I don't get them?" instinct kicked in and fans paid whatever Stubhub had them listed for.

Now, that said, the ticket office TOTALLY MISMANAGED the allocation. Tons of Hawks fans thought they were going to get shut out of the University's allotment, and then all of the sudden seemingly "everybody" got tickets through Iowa. Many of those people already had bought on the secondary market.

 

[doughudd]

The flip side of this is that many Hawkeye fans panicked. It is sort of understandable as most people couldn't possibly gamble and pay $800+ for round trip airfare, book a hotel for $150+ per night, and NOT have tickets in hand. This is perhaps the biggest game Iowa's played to date. The "what if I don't get them?" instinct kicked in and fans paid whatever Stubhub had them listed for.

Now, that said, the ticket office TOTALLY MISMANAGED the allocation. Tons of Hawks fans thought they were going to get shut out of the University's allotment, and then all of the sudden seemingly "everybody" got tickets through Iowa. Many of those people already had bought on the secondary market.

"Tons of Hawk fans thought" that's the problem.

 

[kwik44]

Market was too high from the get-go. I know several who cancelled plans.

Now I'm even thinking of getting two and hitting the road, but probably too late.

 

[MPLS-HAWK]

Now, that said, the ticket office TOTALLY MISMANAGED the allocation.

How so?

 

[Kenneth Griffin]

How so?

It took them way too long to get the allocation figured out. Stanford took requests and notified the next day. Someone from the iowa ticket office told me that over 15% of their season ticket holders have no email address on file, all communications with them are via us mail. Naturally these are the older fans and many have a high amount of points. This really limits how fast they can do anything.

 

[DavenportHawk8]

Seeing how the ticket office handled both the Big Ten Championship and the Rose Bowl really makes me wonder what they are doing over there. I realize there are priority points and what not, but still you have to have an idea what to do.

From now on I will buy my tickets for (BTC & Bowl Games) from other sites. I am planning on buying tickets for the BTC next August when they come out. Even if Iowa doesn't make it, I will sell them for face value to whoever makes it. I realize this year was an oddity for a sell-out, but you have to think if Nebbie/Iowa/Wisky make it next year there will be a large fan base headed there.

if I can't sell the tickets for face value, I will just head to Indy for the weekend. That was a blast and would go back in a heartbeat.

 

[EpenesaEpenesa]

The ticket office should have waited to see demand before announcing anything and make a solid plan on distributing tickets. They could've gave people an idea of what the cutoff points were earlier so people could plan.

 

[Pepperman]

Here's how I think they could do this in the future:

1) However many season tickets you have, you can request that many tickets to the B1G or bowl.
2) If there are more requests than allotted, use points to decide who gets in and who's shut out.
3) Make this announcement immediately, and tell people they must enter their demand ONLINE by a certain time. It is brutal, but the sooner you can make the cutoff, the better. In this case, the Rose was announced on a Sunday, so tell fans to go online and enter their ticket requests by 8:00 PM Monday.
4) A simple program will send an email to everybody immediately after the cutoff saying "congrats" or "sorry".

This can be done very quickly. You just have to admit that it will never be a perfect process and that season ticket holders with the most priority deserve to be at the front of the proverbial line.

 

[theIowaHawk]

It took them way too long to get the allocation figured out. Stanford took requests and notified the next day. Someone from the iowa ticket office told me that over 15% of their season ticket holders have no email address on file, all communications with them are via us mail. Naturally these are the older fans and many have a high amount of points. This really limits how fast they can do anything.

I wondered if this was the case, people not using email/online account.

There has to be ways to speed it up though. Letters reminding about bowl tickets needing to be required by X date, they don't need to know its the Rose to send that out.

I would guess the second biggest issue is the phone lines, people saying that they couldn't get through at all that first Monday. That is pretty unacceptable.

I know people gripe about not knowing points needed, but I can't think of ways to fix that, the ticket office simply does not know how many requests will come through until they do. And they need to know all requesters before they can start sorting.

Maybe a tiered schedule? Everyone who requests by X day early on go by priority, then everyone who requests by Y day a few later go by priority.

 

[theIowaHawk]

The ticket office should have waited to see demand before announcing anything and make a solid plan on distributing tickets. They could've gave people an idea of what the cutoff points were earlier so people could plan.

I'm not sure how this is different from what they did. But they waited to see how many extras the Rose gave which took a weekend.

I think they had a solid plan and followed it, people were just upset about it.

 

[theIowaHawk]

Also, my guess is they give the same amount of time to request for all bowls, which seems sort of silly. It might take a week to get the full demand for the lower tier bowls, but the Rose allotment was gone, iirc, in two days, which I think is realistically always going to be the case. Lessen the request time for the big bowls. They should have access to when the 15% of non-onliners requested, and I'll bet they did so rather quickly.

Maybe we can get one of the Gazette writers to look in to this, get us some public numbers.