Ticket to attend high school sporting events

19AL63

Well-known member
Who has decided that having to get tickets on line only is the way to go. My grand daughter has back to back track meets . Had one on Wednesday and then again to day. Wednesdays I drove 45 minutes to get to. I walk up to the ticket booth and the lady look at me and said have a good time. Free to senior citizens. Today my son calls me and says are you going and I said yes he said I get your ticket for you. Tickets are sold on line only six dollars a ticket plus 2 dollars charge for on line purchase. Think how upset I would have been if I had drive the hour plus to go today and found out no way I could buy a ticket. Do they really think this is going to up attendance. and make the school more money.?
 
 
Do like me and become a senior citizen so they just wave you in without a ticket. Haven't had to deal with a playoff contest, though. May have to think about that.
 
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Maybe I should add the final chapter to my #1 post. Granddaughter texted her dad and say we were to leave the school at 3pm no bus yet and it is 3:30 texted at 3:40 bus came on our way. Since my where my son's family lives is on the way I when to his house to ride with him to the meet. We just get on the road and we get a call from his wife bus broke down and going to the track meet has been canceled. No way to make it on time. I do not mind the time and 16.00 of gas to get to my sons house and back home, but I really do not like the fact I spend 8.00 dollars for a ticked the is nonrefundable. This sucks and yes we did find out they do take cash money at the concession stand.
 
Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, anything to do with school athletics it solely at your own risk. Trying to make anything convenient for fans is foreign. They KNOW that parents/ grandparents will attend events regardless of how they are treated. There is no incentive to have MORE people come. Actually, you'll find some schools that HATE big crowds because it's just more cleanup and hassle to manage people. High school sports! Get in the game! Ha!
Maybe I should add the final chapter to my #1 post. Granddaughter texted her dad and say we were to leave the school at 3pm no bus yet and it is 3:30 texted at 3:40 bus came on our way. Since my where my son's family lives is on the way I when to his house to ride with him to the meet. We just get on the road and we get a call from his wife bus broke down and going to the track meet has been canceled. No way to make it on time. I do not mind the time and 16.00 of gas to get to my sons house and back home, but I really do not like the fact I spend 8.00 dollars for a ticked the is nonrefundable. This sucks and yes we did find out they do take cash money at the concession stand.
 
And online ticketing is not going away. The difficulty of getting ticket takers is helped, you don't have to get hundreds of dollars in change, you can track attendance much better. Some entities can just turn their backs on their customers and it's not a big deal, others try to make it work. I feel for many who don't have smartphones or a way to get online tickets, but if it works for 80%, that's good enough.
 
Who has decided that having to get tickets on line only is the way to go. My grand daughter has back to back track meets . Had one on Wednesday and then again to day. Wednesdays I drove 45 minutes to get to. I walk up to the ticket booth and the lady look at me and said have a good time. Free to senior citizens. Today my son calls me and says are you going and I said yes he said I get your ticket for you. Tickets are sold on line only six dollars a ticket plus 2 dollars charge for on line purchase. Think how upset I would have been if I had drive the hour plus to go today and found out no way I could buy a ticket. Do they really think this is going to up attendance. and make the school more money.?
Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, anything to do with school athletics it solely at your own risk. Trying to make anything convenient for fans is foreign. They KNOW that parents/ grandparents will attend events regardless of how they are treated. There is no incentive to have MORE people come. Actually, you'll find some schools that HATE big crowds because it's just more cleanup and hassle to manage people. High school sports! Get in the game! Ha!
I will not buy tickets online for a local hs sporting event and definitely will not pay a surcharge to boot..... what will happen is attendance will continue to drop......
As my school's Assistant AD, MOST of my job is game management. This requires game set up, ticket set up, game tear down, etc...

In the fall of 2020, with COVID still going strong our district, along well most all other districts in my state made the decision to go to paperless tickets. Progressively as restrictions were lifted we continued to use paperless tickets during this 2021-22 school year. As the school year progressed we continued to use paperless tickets but did finally by winter sports offer a paper ticker option.

Contrary to some belief, paperless tickets had no impact on overall ticket sales (at least for my school). Post game clean up is not necessarily a concern when it comes to big crowds. Big crowds present bigger challenges when it comes to simply crowd control and other external issues that big crowds sometimes bring with them. It's cheaper to have the custodial crew clean the stadium post game than it is to hire X amount of sheriff's deputies to help with crowds before, during and after the games. In fact for this past winter our marching band parents volunteered to help clean up the gym after every home basketball game and our ROTC kids volunteered to clean up the stadium on Friday nights.

This spring I did try to encourage fans to buy paper tickets with cash since the surcharge on paperless tickets is an extra dollar. But, sometimes I also tell people, if a dollar is what's keeping you from attending a HS sports event, then maybe there are other issues going on in your life that go way beyond HS sports.

We've been doing this now for well 2 school years and have yet to see any revenues in any of our sports decline or slip. Now this could also be attributed to not having to spend as much money on athletics during the 2020-21 school year. This year we were more or less back to normal and while I won't know the final numbers until we close out our fiscal year on June 30th, I'm confident from giving the attendance at games the ole eye test that we'll continue to operate in the black.

My point is, expect paperless tickets to remain in those districts that have them. In these past two years we've had zero complaints at our home events regarding paperless tickets. I guess it doesn't hurt that we charge a dollar less for sporting events than the other 14 high schools in our district and 3 dollars less than the other schools in our conference.
 
As my school's Assistant AD, ...

This spring I did try to encourage fans to buy paper tickets with cash since the surcharge on paperless tickets is an extra dollar. But, sometimes I also tell people, if a dollar is what's keeping you from attending a HS sports event, then maybe there are other issues going on in your life that go way beyond HS sports.

o_O
 
As my school's Assistant AD, MOST of my job is game management. This requires game set up, ticket set up, game tear down, etc...

In the fall of 2020, with COVID still going strong our district, along well most all other districts in my state made the decision to go to paperless tickets. Progressively as restrictions were lifted we continued to use paperless tickets during this 2021-22 school year. As the school year progressed we continued to use paperless tickets but did finally by winter sports offer a paper ticker option.

Contrary to some belief, paperless tickets had no impact on overall ticket sales (at least for my school). Post game clean up is not necessarily a concern when it comes to big crowds. Big crowds present bigger challenges when it comes to simply crowd control and other external issues that big crowds sometimes bring with them. It's cheaper to have the custodial crew clean the stadium post game than it is to hire X amount of sheriff's deputies to help with crowds before, during and after the games. In fact for this past winter our marching band parents volunteered to help clean up the gym after every home basketball game and our ROTC kids volunteered to clean up the stadium on Friday nights.

This spring I did try to encourage fans to buy paper tickets with cash since the surcharge on paperless tickets is an extra dollar. But, sometimes I also tell people, if a dollar is what's keeping you from attending a HS sports event, then maybe there are other issues going on in your life that go way beyond HS sports.

We've been doing this now for well 2 school years and have yet to see any revenues in any of our sports decline or slip. Now this could also be attributed to not having to spend as much money on athletics during the 2020-21 school year. This year we were more or less back to normal and while I won't know the final numbers until we close out our fiscal year on June 30th, I'm confident from giving the attendance at games the ole eye test that we'll continue to operate in the black.

My point is, expect paperless tickets to remain in those districts that have them. In these past two years we've had zero complaints at our home events regarding paperless tickets. I guess it doesn't hurt that we charge a dollar less for sporting events than the other 14 high schools in our district and 3 dollars less than the other schools in our conference.
Great reply from someone in the biz. AD's at schools have to be one of the more important, yet thankless jobs out there. HS sports is incredibly important to communities, just try to get rid of a popular coach and you'll find out.
I still find HS sports as one of the most wholesome and cheap forms of entertainment. I laugh when people complain about ticket prices. There's not much you can do for entertainment cheaper than the $7-$10 ticket costs to a game.
 
From speaking from someone who is ticket manager and someone who has to do the books at a local school, they prefer online ticketing since it basically does the accounting for them. Also, it eliminates the possibility of a dishonest ticket seller who is skimming at schools who have shoddy accounting practices. Does any of this help the fan who doesn't want to buy a ticket online? No, but it is another reason why online ticketing is here to stay and why paper ticketing is unlikely to be maintained in the future.
 
From speaking from someone who is ticket manager and someone who has to do the books at a local school, they prefer online ticketing since it basically does the accounting for them. Also, it eliminates the possibility of a dishonest ticket seller who is skimming at schools who have shoddy accounting practices. Does any of this help the fan who doesn't want to buy a ticket online? No, but it is another reason why online ticketing is here to stay and why paper ticketing is unlikely to be maintained in the future.

It's not always a case of "not wanting."
Those not looking to leave people behind will find a way to provide for them. Covid certainly moved up the time-line on this. Anyone know of schools who implemented this before covid?
 
Cash is freedom. Allow people freedom who chose.
Man, IDK. This app world be scary. I can go to the dollar tree, pay cash for some snacks, come home and all my google ads are doritos. I'll be THINKING, I ought to get the furnace serviced, go look at some CNN articles and for sure, "furnace explodes...."

I think there's micro-chips in the dollars.
 
Man, IDK. This app world be scary. I can go to the dollar tree, pay cash for some snacks, come home and all my google ads are doritos. I'll be THINKING, I ought to get the furnace serviced, go look at some CNN articles and for sure, "furnace explodes...."

I think there's micro-chips in the dollars.
If you don't have physical objects, what do you really own?
 
If there
Great reply from someone in the biz. AD's at schools have to be one of the more important, yet thankless jobs out there. HS sports is incredibly important to communities, just try to get rid of a popular coach and you'll find out.
I still find HS sports as one of the most wholesome and cheap forms of entertainment. I laugh when people complain about ticket prices. There's not much you can do for entertainment cheaper than the $7-$10 ticket costs to a game.
Sure...we don't pay taxes.
 
IF there's one person who doesn't get to see a game because of this bullcrap..it's too many. We've been down this road many times but it's a pain in the butt for even experienced phone users. How many elderly people have decided it's not worth the trouble? Many. Many.
 
I wish it was one way or the other. I think confusion reins when 1/2 the teams on your schedule take cash and the other do only online ticketing. If you're going to have on-line, I think you need to have at least the ability to do a few cash transactions.
 
IF there's one person who doesn't get to see a game because of this bullcrap..it's too many. We've been down this road many times but it's a pain in the butt for even experienced phone users. How many elderly people have decided it's not worth the trouble? Many. Many.

Where it has hit me most, I can't just Friday whim an out of town game for the experience. For in-season it's cut down my visits to other stadiums. For playoffs, I usually have a week to plan, buy the ticket and get to a printer to carry it with me.

On the plus side, I spent less time lost in rural Ohio looking for a town I forget to get a clear map in my head before heading out. I find myself too many times asking people how the hell I get back to highway to Toledo from wherever I'm at. My AAA atlas has long ago gone to dust and who needs it anyhow, when you got Google map....on your laptop back home in Toledo... It's a conundrum.
 
Where it has hit me most, I can't just Friday whim an out of town game for the experience. For in-season it's cut down my visits to other stadiums. For playoffs, I usually have a week to plan, buy the ticket and get to a printer to carry it with me.

On the plus side, I spent less time lost in rural Ohio looking for a town I forget to get a clear map in my head before heading out. I find myself too many times asking people how the hell I get back to highway to Toledo from wherever I'm at. My AAA atlas has long ago gone to dust and who needs it anyhow, when you got Google map....on your laptop back home in Toledo... It's a conundrum.
I'm going to buy you a cell phone.
 
I'm not a fan either but it is one of those situations where you can see where it is going, there is nothing we can do about it, it is not going back to where we were so we must adapt.
 
some of the kids have threatened to by me an "obama" phone. I've no idea what it is but I think you need a smart phone for these tickets so I don't think the obama phone will be of help. BTW, not a political statement. Just using the vernacular.
The Obama phone uses the Hope And Change 2.0 operating system. The kids are hoping you'll change your mind and quit using cash.
 
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