It did not take long for Michigan to change the general admission ticket plan. After just one season, Michigan will remove the general admission ticket policy and implement a new method that reportedly is aimed to favor loyalty of the fans who showed up to games in 2013.
According to MLive.com, Michigan’s new ticket policy for students will give preference to those students who showed up for games on time last season, giving those students better seats in the Michigan Stadium student section. So those students who showed up early for the Akron game last season may get the edge over the students who showed up late for a home game against Minnesota.
“Our goal has always been for students to attend games and arrive early, and this new plan reinforces that goal,” Hunter Lochmann, Chief Marketing Officer for Michigan Athletics, said in a release issued by the university. “From the student perspective, feedback through [Michigan ‘s Central Student Government] as well as multiple surveys showed that sitting in reserved groups was the students #1 concern and this plan addresses that feedback. Michael and Bobby were great partners in helping create this solution.“
This is a great idea for Michigan at a time when schools around the country have battled attendance issues in general and with students. Alabama head coach Nick Saban criticized the attendance of the student section at some Alabama games last season, but the problems faced at Alabama were no different from those faced at any number of schools across the country, big and small. The issues at times are more noticeable at larger programs with larger stadiums. A noticeably late arriving student section can sometimes have any number of issues preventing them from having a packed section. Sometimes, such as at Penn State in recent years, it can be a tedious and slower process of having tickets scanned to ensure those sitting in the student section are indeed students.
What Michigan is doing is encouraging students to arrive on time, if not early, for all of the games. If it works, Michigan’s student section should be a tough ticket for years to come.