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GeorgiaBuck2
Lets Go!
I'd say we'd take him but he'd be a downgrade. And Hartline doesn't take transfers lol.
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I love Mo, but this is an idiotic take. Bama isnt going to raise $70mil for a buyout, to just then hire Gruden who would command close to $10mil/yr. And it wouldn’t be a guarantee that he’d do much better than DeBoer. And on top of that still have to worry about mass transfers and having to pay their roster on top of recruits.
Gruden is a nice name but that’s about it, he hasn’t seen continued success at any level in years. Might as well continue as a content creator online, he can be undefeated there. He just played golf with the president, why take on the pressure of Bama? If Gruden were to return to college go to a place with far less pressure like what Belichek did, imo.
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Alabama revoked football tickets, disrupted shadow market and quietly built its own
Alabama in January began revoking football season tickets from fans it believed was selling all their seats to ticket brokers. What happened to those tickets and who is profiting from the sales?
www.al.com
The purge began in late January.
A number of Alabama football season ticket holders, some of whom have had seats for decades, received emails from UA Athletics stating they’d lost the right to renew.
It’s a tale of loyalty, money and who’s getting the largest share of both.
There’s no shortage of either in football-mad Tuscaloosa. Football ticket revenue accounted for $38 million of the $140 million the sport made for UA athletics last year. And that doesn’t include millions more in donations that season ticket holders are required to make.
These purged season tickets had been flagged for excessive resale, which the university said was justification for revocation per its listed policy. Alabama’s not alone in this practice that’s become more common from college sports to the pros.
The aim, it appears, is a crackdown on ticket resale brokers who’ve made a big business of flipping these tickets for profits. That went unchecked for decades but the business model is evolving quickly. Starting this year, revenue sharing with athletes is adding a strain to even the biggest budgets; no dollar is being left on the table.
Ticket brokers simply didn’t give Alabama a cut and they were often bypassing Alabama’s official resale partner. So these sellers and the season ticket holders who supplied their inventory became the focus of the late January purge.
Of course, not every ticket yanked back was involved in these outside business arrangements, former ticket holders told AL.com. One face-value transfer between old Alabama roommates was flagged when no broker was involved, for example.
Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne said the school granted many appeals when it was clear that a mistake had been made. Some told AL.com they felt burned by the whole ordeal and forfeited their seats without a fight.
The overarching idea, Byrne told AL.com, was to improve the seats of longtime ticket holders who weren’t reselling and/or to offer these seats to those on the waiting list for season tickets.
“Obviously, some people who lost their tickets didn’t like it,” Byrne said in an interview with AL.com on a range of topics from football scheduling to its Nike contract. “And we anticipated that. But we also have people who have been wanting to get better seats who have liked it.”
However, some of these forfeited seats were also appearing on secondary ticket websites, such as StubHub, at significant markups. And that’s where a less-publicized partnership comes into play.
Fans might not realize that sometimes, those tickets on the secondary sites aren’t coming from peers but a company Alabama contracts to offload unsold seats at premium prices.
The other name in resale
Dynamic Pricing Partners isn’t a name you find splashed on Alabama’s official website like SeatGeek. And UA is far from alone partnering with a ticket consolidator like Dynamic Pricing Partners but it’s a reality in the current ticketing marketplace.
Alabama officials said any tickets revoked or forfeited in the offseason purge went through primary channels first. That includes reseating existing season ticket holders looking to improve locations and then offering what’s left to the waiting list.
The Dynamic Pricing Partners are more of a “backstop” to ensure these tickets don’t go unsold.
Essentially, it’s akin to the if you can’t beat them, join them concept with brokers. But it’s more like, take away their ability to compete and use a similar strategy.
One season ticket holder who spoke to AL.com said he forfeited a portion of his holdings after Alabama revoked and then reinstated another set.
By midsummer, those exact tickets he surrendered were listed on a resale site called TickPick.com. Where each season ticket plus required donation would cost around $2,550 per season, the total asking price for five of the seven home games was $4,084 per ticket.
The seats were not available for home games with Vanderbilt or Eastern Illinois but the tickets located near the 50-yard line had an asking price as high as $1,200+ for the Tennessee game, down to $340 for Saturday’s opener with Louisiana-Monroe. They were priced at more than $1,100 for LSU’s visit in November.
There’s no guarantee the tickets will ultimately fetch that kind of money, but it’s clear that more money can be made by selling tickets directly to the secondary market.
We don’t know the exact nature of Alabama’s deal with Dynamic Pricing Partners. Byrne said he would not allow AL.com to view the contract because it runs through the Crimson Tide Foundation, a private fundraising arm of the athletics department.
Scott Friedman knows this side of the business. From 2013-19, he ran the ticketing office at the University of Illinois. He is familiar with the ways companies like Dynamic Pricing Partners work with schools, such as Alabama.
The tickets, in his understanding, are sold on consignment by Dynamic Pricing Partners with north of 90% of the profit going to the school and the rest to the company.
He said targeting the resellers brings the profit the outside businesses were making back to the school.
“Really kind of create a ticket distribution center where the university can really figure out how to price their tickets for the future,” said Friedman, now a live entertainment consultant. “Know where folks are buying on what secondary sites, and it’s a lot easier for them to utilize one massive brokerage company than have hundreds of others list tickets at once. So that’s basically what’s going on with Alabama and several other institutions all over the country for college football and basketball — the revenue sports.”
One contract that was provided upon request was Alabama’s deal with SeatGeek, the official resale partner of the athletics department. According to the deal signed in 2023, Alabama receives 20% of the net secondary fee revenue from tickets sold on the site. The school is guaranteed $660,000 for each of the four years covered by the contract, through June 30, 2027.
Links to SeatGeek are plentiful through Alabama’s official ticketing page on RollTide.com. Through that arrangement, it makes sense for the school to direct season ticket holders to sell their unused tickets through its official partner, as it essentially profits twice from the same tickets.
And, as the $38 million-plus in 2024 football ticket revenue confirms, there’s a lot on the table for Alabama. And it isn’t sitting still.
Expenses are only going up, so schools are looking at every strategy to squeeze out a few extra bucks.
Ticketing is part of the plan in Tuscaloosa.
Alabama raised ticket prices 10% by no longer waiving the sales tax added to seats. That would add a few million in revenue, which will now help pay for the $20.5 million it will share with athletes.
They’re not alone. High-profile programs nationwide added similar, if not higher, price increases due to revenue sharing.
Tennessee, for one, added a 10% “talent fee” to each ticket plus an extra 4.5% increase in required donations for seats.
Auburn raised prices on some seats and dropped them on others, a spokesperson told AL.com.
Canceling season tickets to root out scalpers isn’t unique to Alabama, either. The Detroit Lions caused a stir when doing the same this offseason. So did the Packers. The University of Michigan got sued by a ticket broker whose season tickets were revoked.
Taking such drastic actions became easier for schools and teams after moving from paper tickets to digital versions. Now these transactions can be tracked, making it easier to identify ticket holders who sell to brokers.
To be clear, the use of Dynamic Pricing Partners is not a new strategy for Alabama, Friedman said, but the cancellation of season tickets on this scale is an escalation of it.
Ramping it up raises another ethical question — one that doesn’t have a consensus answer.
‘The fans have no idea’
If Alabama and other schools/teams are in the secondary ticket market, is there an obligation to disclose that to buyers?
Do fans know that the school and Dynamic Pricing Partners could be the other party in a ticket transaction?
“They do not,” Friedman said. “The fans have no idea.”
None of the ticket holders who spoke with AL.com were aware of this practice, which, to be clear, does not appear to have any legal issues.
“So, you can look at that in two ways,” Friedman said. “You can say it’s good because they’re still supporting Alabama athletics, but the average fan has no idea what’s going on.”
What is sustainable?
Ultimately, the success of these revenue ventures and the football ticketing model at Alabama faces market pressures from a few directions.
Prices rose in the high times of the Nick Saban era when championships became an expectation. Can that continue as bullishly if a drop off hits in this next phase of a historic program? Last Saturday’s loss at Florida State certainly didn’t help momentum.
What’s not up for debate is the quality of games coming to Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Long gone are the neutral-site season openers that sent high-profile games to Atlanta or Dallas, replaced with home-and-home series against power conference opponents designed to add value to ticket buyers. Florida State is set to play in Tuscaloosa next September, with future games set with the likes of Ohio State and Notre Dame.
A nine-game SEC schedule will mean an extra conference home game every other year so, conceivably, Alabama will play at least one fewer low-level opponent each year.
The market will decide the prices fans are willing to pay as Alabama moves forward with its strategy.
Opinions on the 2025 offseason moves were mixed. Longtime donors and season ticket holders swept up in the purge felt burned by the hasty move after years of loyalty. Others online applauded the move because they thought fewer ticket broker transactions would cut down on visiting fans infringing on seats that would otherwise have crimson and white occupants.
And so the machine churns.
Alabama will open its home schedule at 6:45 p.m. CT Saturday when Louisiana-Monroe visits Bryant-Denny Stadium. Seats are listed for as little as $17 on SeatGeek to see the Crimson Tide face a punching bag with a fraction of the home team’s resources. Tickets are sold out on the Alabama website, which includes a link to buy secondary market seats on SeatGeek.
Single-game tickets are sold out straight through the Nov. 15 meeting with Oklahoma. In a twist, face-value tickets through Alabama’s site are listed for $198 while its official partner, SeatGeek, has seats listed in the same upper-level section starting at $154.
Alabama’s getting a cut either way.
How big? Good question, but the marketplace for Crimson Tide football ticketing remains big business in a complex time for the collegiate athletics industry.
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OregonBuckeye
Semper Fi Buckeyes
Herbie crying his eyes out ready to chastise the Bama fanbase the next time he calls one of their games, I'm sure
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