Ticket Sales...

By Alex Wendt

On Tuesday, I got two submissions regarding the way ticket sales were dealt with at two different schools. I thought that everyone would be interested in reading this contrast in sales methods and contrast in resulting attitudes.

First an email from Mike Neilson, a student at Penn State.

"...I was disappointed with the way the University handled ticket sales. Wristbands were given out at a location that was disclosed on the radio. I see this as being a cross between a true lottery system and the system described by Alex Wendt on January 27 at Duke University. The problem up here is that 3000 wristbands were given out, then about 1100 numbers were picked. This gave no preference to people who were willing to wait in line..."

Just a few minutes later I got a mail from Mike Waters, and he described a much less hostile situation at Furman University.

"...Tickets went on sale at 10:a.m. Monday, the first. We got there Sunday afternoon. There were already about 20 die hards ahead of us, so we pitched a tent. By then, the snow started to fall. There were only 100 tickets available to non-Furman people. So we got there expecting to spend the night in the snow. The Furman staff was fully organized. Not only did they sing us up Sunday night according to our place in line, but they also let the people sleep inside that did not have any place to go for the night. It was the best performance of ticket sales I have ever seen. We were expecting to get the worst seats in the house ,but they reserved seats for us in the tenth, 20th and the balcony. I just wanted to applaud the Furman staff on this one."

If you've got any ideas about who people might talk to at their college to avoid a ticket sales disaster, or did you have a good/bad ticket sales experience at your school you can let us know on our submit page.