Rate your season ticket buying experience

[mjmaherjr]

I would give it a 10. I ended up 5 rows from where I wanted to be and the communication from the ticket office was excellent!

See mostly these are good stories. Communication as far as points isn’t ticket office fault . It was definitely clunky but my quintile improved but. Didn’t matter we didn’t want better seats anyway we just want 114. Somehow 1 of our rows was stolen that’s annoying but we still got the last 2 back rows

 

[Beasts of the East]

I would give it a 10. I ended up 5 rows from where I wanted to be and the communication from the ticket office was excellent!

It was.not only ticket office and folks from Learfield, but also Nick.V's development staff fielding questions and providing support as well. Agree - great job.

Have a friend who chose yesterday. Low points but not an sju grad but fantastic fan. His seats in 108 on the aisle were gone so he opted for 104 in a very low row. They were a lot cheaper so he bought 3 seats instead of two.

I'm waiting to hear the final nimber of season tix sold. Going to bet a really nice bump.

 

[Beasts of the East]

5/10. My seats didn’t really move meaningfully. I also didn’t donate anything extra, bc it was unclear what that would get me. I also had to read a bunch of emails (and emails correcting those emails) for a process that didn’t move my seat or gain the school any money. The software worked, but it was just a waste of my time.

One correction to your post:

Just this week I had lunch with a very close friend who is one of our most successful and generous alums in all ways. We spoke about charitable donations, and they were adamant that you don't donate to get something in return, you donate to support the mission.

Of course, as others have noted here accurately, by tying priority seat selection to donations, St John’s (and many other schools) adulterated charitable giving by this process.

It's a huge topic that strikes at the heart of building a donor base, but the challenge is to increase the number of alums who really believe in the mission of the school and elect to support it as part of their charitable giving. Dangling better seats or loss of prime seat locations is just not a healthy way to grow a donor base.

 

[Hardy]

One correction to your post:

Just this week I had lunch with a very close friend who is one of our most successful and generous alums in all ways. We spoke about charitable donations, and they were adamant that you don't donate to get something in return, you donate to support the mission.

Of course, as others have noted here accurately, by tying priority seat selection to donations, St John’s (and many other schools) adulterated charitable giving by this process.

It's a huge topic that strikes at the heart of building a donor base, but the challenge is to increase the number of alums who really believe in the mission of the school and elect to support it as part of their charitable giving. Dangling better seats or loss of prime seat locations is just not a healthy way to grow a donor base.

Idk, this was a pretty explicit quid pro quo, they just did a bad job of explaining what the we’d get

 

[Beasts of the East]

Idk, this was a pretty explicit quid pro quo, they just did a bad job of explaining what the we’d get

Well all they promised was moving up in the line in terms of priority order. 50% of STHs had close to zero points after mandstory donstion and 100 points per year. So many moved from tail end of pack to middle. However that was not good enough for those who had great seats that were gone by the time the top 15-20% selected.

 

[IDRAFT]

Well all they promised was moving up in the line in terms of priority order. 50% of STHs had close to zero points after mandstory donstion and 100 points per year. So many moved from tail end of pack to middle. However that was not good enough for those who had great seats that were gone by the time the top 15-20% selected.

I reviewed the calculation of my point total with SJU, and mine was calculated as follows:

- 4 points for every dollar donated
- 1,000 points for every year as a STH for the account

Other than mandatory donations I would say I fall into a category who donated fairly little. Being upfront. My account was for 12 years as before that my tickets were under someone else's account (which eliminated a LOT of years.) With 12 years and not being any kind of a real financial supporter of the school, I landed at between the top 35% and 40%.

My point being anyone who had tickets even from Mullin on probably made the top 50% without really donating. My other point would be that for anyone attempting to move into the top 15% from where I was or below should have realized it was going to take a VERY large financial commitment. The people in that area based on the calculations above were already doing that previously, logically to move up on them you had to do much more than them. That isn't many people. It would have been easier to move from the bottom to say 60%, but the seat incentive for that was zilch, I know someone who just picked this Wednesday, almost a full week after me and they now sit next to me in both arenas as those seats were still available. And I haven't published my location - hold all jokes of that being a reason they hadn't been taken.

Moving up won't be zero folks - the guy who sat next to me at MSG bought his seats two years ago and I know him, decent guy who clearly has what I will call FU money. Good chance he jumped on this to make a forward move and hats off to him. Overall, though, there just couldn't be a tremendous amount of churn and we can see in this thread most people haven't moved much if at all.

I have heard the school made a lot so good for them, and the theory is us too with the money that will support the program. Whether they bother again next year when the people who just did this have found it isn't much of anything will be determined. In the future I'm in the camp that there might just be more money to be made with straight price increases which is easier to do and will accomplish the same goal of making sure those who pony up the most have the best seats.

Don't know only spit balling and there is a season, thankfully, to be played in between.