The Ticket Situation

It was recently released that the Jaguars would need to sell approximately 11,000 tickets to avoid blackouts this season. Of that, approximately 6,000 are the fans responsibility and 5,000 will come from group sales.

I’ve had a fear for quite sometime that there’s no ticket push coming in July despite it traditionally being the best sales month. I think the Jaguars may have pulled demand forward through the 30 for 30 plan and the publicity from Team Teal. If true, sadly, it means the whale is going to stay on the beach for a while longer and the Jaguars long term ability to stay in Jacksonville is going to be exposed in a (if it’s possible) even more devastating way.

A couple of thoughts on pulling tickets sales forward:
• It’s a good thing. There’s no value in waiting. It doesn’t in any way diminish fans who stepped up. Better to get those tickets sold than to wait. It also brings into focus exactly how dire the situation is.
• Downside. There probably aren’t a ton of people out there who a) don’t know tickets are available and b) need you to do something to make them more enticing, which means the hardest tickets to sell are the ones we have left. If the free 30 month loan and $2,000 dollars worth of Teal Deals didn’t do it nor the threat of the team leaving didn’t/civic duty push, I don’t know if realistically there’s much that can be done right now to make tickets more appealing. They can’t be cheaper or more public than they are now.

At this point I think the Jags only have a few options left in the gimmick department. They may bring back out the half-season packs they used last year. I have no idea how successful they were but I think that could still be an appealing package for a segment of consumers. That said, the Jags probably know exactly how successful those packages were and the effect those had on other sales, so I’m guessing we won’t be seeing any half-packs(they’ve also started selling single game preseason tickets which I think may signal a shift in focus towards single game sales).

A smart option, that I really hope the Jags employ, is to offer the Denver game, the Indy game and/or the Titans game as packages coupled with a less attractive game from later in the season (See Oakland and Cleveland. Although, I am personally excited to see the corpse of Al Davis and Jake Delhomme in consecutive home games).

The bottom line is that unless there’s a rush of demand from some unforeseen market (Come on Orlando and Savannah!), then the Jags are going to be fighting a week to week battle with the blackout monster. The ability of the Jags to win that fight is going to be based on a few factors outside of their control (namely unemployment and weather) but also on how hot a ticket they can be once the season starts. On the plus side, they’re going to have some time to get the ball rolling with the Broncos, Eagles, Colts and Titans. The downside is those games are easier to sell out (with the exception of Denver) because those teams are competitive rivals who will be fighting for playing spots. Realistically, for the Jags to be hot, I think they need to come home to Houston 6-2 or better, and probably on a 4 or 5 game win streak. Can they do it? Who knows but that’s why they play the games, right?

-AQW