• The KillerFrogs

The Disappearance of Amon G. Carter's Home Field Advantage and Ways to Fix It.

tcumaniac

Full Member
Piggy backing off of the "Season Ticket Holder Survey" thread, and since TCU only allowed 50 character responses, I've decided to discuss my concerns here. Everyone clearly has their own personal preferences regarding things such as what music is played, how loud it's played, how the team enters the field, what chants we do, who leads the chants, etc. But at the end of the day, most of these things are fairly irrelevant to the ultimate game day atmosphere and home field advantage we have (well don't have at this point).

What really matters at the end of the day (outside of winning) is getting butts in seats, and more specifically getting purple butts in our best seats. The seats between the 20s and closest to the field (both on the west and east side) are consistently way too empty or full of opposing teams' colors. Far too many of our stadium's best seats (not including the club seats and suites) are controlled by people that don't regularly use them. There are many reasons for this. Many donors control more seats than they need or can use. They have seats elsewhere in the stadium that leave their extra seats unused, given to friends or clients who end up being casual attendees (non TCU loyal fans that probably show up late, barely cheer, and leave early), or getting sold on the secondary market (often winding up in the hands of fans for the opposing team).

Yes, attendance is a problem across the country, as is stubhub reselling, and schools with smaller fan bases such as ourselves are much quicker to notice the consequences (especially during down years when the team isn't very good). But this is not an acceptable excuse for what causes, in my opinion, the biggest contributor to our stadium's home field advantage that has all but disappeared.

Just like every other school in the country, we have a core and loyal part of our fan base that consistently attends games. But rather than these people sitting in unison in our stadium's best seats providing some kind of coherent home field advantage, they are scattered throughout the stadium, a lot of them in the 400 seats or sitting on the east side only to look down and see better seats that have never been available during the upgrade process that are either empty or occupied by away fans game after game after game. It's extremely disheartening, severely fractures our fan base's unity, and is ultimately causing more and more people to reconsider whether they want to renew their season tickets.

There are no easy fixes, but I do think we've reached the point where more drastic measures need to be taken.

To TCU's credit, they did make a subtle step in the right direction by limiting how many seats could be upgraded this past off-season at 8 per account. Their logic was that there are very few accounts with more than 8 seats that get consistently used. According to someone I spoke with, most accounts with more than 8 seats typically have the extras going unused or being resold on stubhub. TCU's hope was to help level the playing field and prevent someone with 40 seats (most of them for reselling) upgrading all their seats before someone with 2 seats had the chance to upgrade theirs.

I totally agree with and appreciate this step forward, but this exact thing had been allowed for years, so unfortunately a lot of the damage has been done. For years people have been hoarding tickets to resell and upgrading their extra seats ahead of actual season ticket holders that intend to use their seats. Not being able to upgrade more than 8 seats last year doesn't change the fact that many really good seats are already controlled for the sole purpose of reselling.

As I previously stated, this creates a severe fracture in our stadium and is the primary reason, outside of the west side club, that it's almost impossible to find seats where you're not surrounded by opposing fans. I sit in row J, Section 234 (this is the 50 yard line for those that don't know off the top of their head) and there are seats next to me, in front of me, and behind me that are sold to away fans every single game. Seats that real TCU season ticket holders don't have access to, because they are controlled by someone that just resells them on stubhub.

TCU naturally hesitates to take any steps that are too drastic, because they know this will reduce the number of season tickets sold, a number that is already on the decline. But I also don't think they fully appreciate the number of people deciding not to renew their season tickets because of this exact problem that they are failing to legitimately address. It's simply not fun to attend a home game for your school and constantly be surrounded by opposing fans (especially when you have to deal with fans from schools like Tech, OU, Baylor, Texas etc.).

Here are practical solutions I think TCU needs to take to address these issues:
  • Start reaching out to season ticket accounts that are consistently reselling tickets on the secondary market, especially the seats that are resold for every game. TCU has tracked this activity for years, and they know every time a ticket is resold on stubhub. They just haven't done anything about it yet. Notify these accounts that if this activity continues, TCU has the right to revoke those seats from their account. This is not a novel idea, and it's been done across the country at school's where good seats were consistently being resold rather than sat it. It should be TCU's duty to ensure that our best seats are being sat in by TCU fans. Up to this point, TCU has not done that.
  • Put a ceiling on the amount of priority points you can earn per season ticket per year at 8 seats. As I was told by an employee at TCU, there are very few accounts that actively use more than 8 seats. The accounts that actually need more than that will continue to buy them, but otherwise, stop incentivizing people with priority points to buy an excessive number of extra seats just to resell.
  • Stop promoting Stubhub reselling. As it stands now, TCU literally has stubhub integrated into our online accounts. You can login to your TCU gofrogs account and automatically list all of your seats at the click of a button. Jeremiah Donati has stated that he doesn't like tickets being resold on stubhub. If this is the case, why make it so easy to resell them? And even worse, why send season ticket holders emails promoting the ability to resell them on stubhub?
  • Lastly, something has to be done about our west side lower bowl. In its current state, it is an absolute joke. The seats and rows are way too far apart. That entire section needs to be reconfigured and resat. You could easily fit 2/3 more seat back chairs in that section than what exist now. We cannot continue to allow the section immediately behind our team bench to be so sparsely attended and void of any energy. It is terribly embarrassing and has a direct impact on recruiting and our team's energy level.

I know this is long and I know there will be smart ass comments. But I genuinely think these are practical steps that would help dramatically improve our game day atmosphere and home field advantage.

#MakeTheCarterGreatAgain
 
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Eight

Member
know just the person to help you with this issue

DW1.jpg
 

jake102

Active Member
Fine suggestions. I'd certainly be curious the cost to destroy and re-pour the lower west side, definitely a design mistake.

That being said - winning will cure 90% of the problem. I'm considering dropping my season tickets after next season, but it has nothing to do with opposing fans or empty seats. I've lost a degree of hope we can actually compete for a NC and we aren't trending in the right direction as a program. Combined with a move to Houston and two very young children, it's hard enough to make one game a year. The product is quickly becoming not worth the considerably greater effort. I'll probably never drop them because I have bad TCU football FOMO, but I'm considering it for the first time.
 

BrewingFrog

Was I supposed to type something here?
Yeah, there will be smart-assed comments (from the Usual Suspects), but you hit a few important items dead-on. The 8-seat idea is a very good one, and would help even things back out. Sadly, it will take literally decades for this to take place.

Aside from taking the Giganto-sized jackhammer to the lower West Side, I don't see any way that the seat placement/density issue would be changed. Additionally, the folks that put up the money to sit there and helped to fund the re-building in the first place would probably object pretty strongly to suddenly be 1.) Out of a seat for a year or so, 2.) Going from roomy and comfortable to noisy and crowded, and 3.) Otherwise inconvenienced by dealing with narrow aisles and narrow-width seating, as many are older and rather delicate. We have, over the years, heaped well-deserved ridicule on programs like A&M and Tennessee for yo-yo-ing donors and Alumni on the concept of "lifetime" and other bait-and-switch tactics applied to seating and parking. I'd hope that TCU quits while they are ahead with only the +4 in the negative balance pan. Treachery becomes habit forming...

As for the StubHub-ers, I have nothing but contempt. TCU was foolish and stupid to allow this in the first place, and letting it go on has only made matters worse. Yank the Season Ticket privileges for those seats that are re-sold on a site like StubHub more than two times a season. Reselling through TCU? Fine and dandy. Going unused is one thing, reselling to opposing fans is another entirely. It obliterates what was once a home-field advantage.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
I'm adamantly opposed to stopping re-sell's on StubHub if that could even be done. Not only will it stop me from purchasing tickets and attending games, I suspect that it will do the same for many others. If I have to purchase a full season's worth of tickets knowing that I can only use about half of them, I'm going to purchase precisely none.
 

Eight

Member
Yeah, there will be smart-assed comments (from the Usual Suspects), but you hit a few important items dead-on. The 8-seat idea is a very good one, and would help even things back out. Sadly, it will take literally decades for this to take place.

Aside from taking the Giganto-sized jackhammer to the lower West Side, I don't see any way that the seat placement/density issue would be changed. Additionally, the folks that put up the money to sit there and helped to fund the re-building in the first place would probably object pretty strongly to suddenly be 1.) Out of a seat for a year or so, 2.) Going from roomy and comfortable to noisy and crowded, and 3.) Otherwise inconvenienced by dealing with narrow aisles and narrow-width seating, as many are older and rather delicate. We have, over the years, heaped well-deserved ridicule on programs like A&M and Tennessee for yo-yo-ing donors and Alumni on the concept of "lifetime" and other bait-and-switch tactics applied to seating and parking. I'd hope that TCU quits while they are ahead with only the +4 in the negative balance pan. Treachery becomes habit forming...

As for the StubHub-ers, I have nothing but contempt. TCU was foolish and stupid to allow this in the first place, and letting it go on has only made matters worse. Yank the Season Ticket privileges for those seats that are re-sold on a site like StubHub more than two times a season. Reselling through TCU? Fine and dandy. Going unused is one thing, reselling to opposing fans is another entirely. It obliterates what was once a home-field advantage.

simple supply and demand and right now there isn't more demand that supply for tickets to amon carter.

how many games in the old amon g were sold out?

del conte did what he had to do to get the new stadium built and the current administration is doing what has to be done to get tickets sold
 

Dogfrog

Active Member
I don’t have a problem with a resell program. It just pisses me off that it is season ticket holders/brokers profiting from it. I’d like my alma mater to create a way to keep the additional revenue from aftermarket sales.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
Serious question. Was Amon G Carter ever a real "home field advantage" when playing back in the SWC or was it only when we were largely playing teams from much more distant places who's fan bases didn't travel nearly as well? I seriously don't know because I'm not sure I ever attended a game at AGC when TCU was in the SWC.
 

Eight

Member
I don’t have a problem with a resell program. It just pisses me off that it is season ticket holders/brokers profiting from it. I’d like my alma mater to create a way to keep the additional revenue from aftermarket sales.

curious, is there another market where after the initial transaction the original issuer profits from secondary sales even though they don't have an ownership interest in the item sold?
 

BrewingFrog

Was I supposed to type something here?
del conte did what he had to do to get the new stadium built and the current administration is doing what has to be done to get tickets sold

Yes, this is true. What's done is done. The question is, how does TCU regain the home field that was seen back at the old Amon G. Carter in 2009? Remember the Utah game? That was killed dead by the re-seating. How does TCU get that back?

If by cynically continuing to allow reselling as essentially a for-profit enterprise just to keep their own numbers up, well, that ain't happening. I moved from 236 because of drunken fools from other fanbases. Now my new section is getting bad. Why should I continue to purchase season tickets if all I am surrounded by is drunken Tech folk*? When I call it quits, those seats go to another Member in Good Standing of the StubHub Season Ticket Brigade. Yes, TCU sold those tickets. But at what cost?






*
Tech is too easy an example, admittedly.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
curious, is there another market where after the initial transaction the original issuer profits from secondary sales even though they don't have an ownership interest in the item sold?

Have no idea but my mother (a singer back in the days of the Louisiana Hayride and Midnight Jamboree) said that there was some strange stuff with profits from some of those record deals that got traded.
 

tcumaniac

Full Member
I don’t have a problem with a resell program. It just pisses me off that it is season ticket holders/brokers profiting from it. I’d like my alma mater to create a way to keep the additional revenue from aftermarket sales.
FWIW, it is my understanding that TCU does have a profit share agreement with stubhub that gives them a percentage of the fees that stubhub charges for each sell.
 

4TCU

Full Member
Serious question. Was Amon G Carter ever a real "home field advantage" when playing back in the SWC or was it only when we were largely playing teams from much more distant places who's fan bases didn't travel nearly as well? I seriously don't know because I'm not sure I ever attended a game at AGC when TCU was in the SWC.

No it wasn't ...not enough fans back in the day. It was better once Wacker came but the 84 Tcu/UT game was flooded with UT fans.
 

Eight

Member
Have no idea but my mother (a singer back in the days of the Louisiana Hayride and Midnight Jamboree) said that there was some strange stuff with profits from some of those record deals that got traded.

the solution then is to have season ticket holders sign a usage agreement similar to the contracts recording artist signed back in the day
 

Frog Wild

Ticket Exchange Pass
Serious question. Was Amon G Carter ever a real "home field advantage" when playing back in the SWC or was it only when we were largely playing teams from much more distant places who's fan bases didn't travel nearly as well? I seriously don't know because I'm not sure I ever attended a game at AGC when TCU was in the SWC.

We definitely did not have a home field advantage in the 70s and early 80s (at least) largely because we were awful and no one went to games. Texas, A&M, Tech and Arkie brought fans, otherwise, attendance was sparse.
 

Eight

Member
Yes, this is true. What's done is done. The question is, how does TCU regain the home field that was seen back at the old Amon G. Carter in 2009? Remember the Utah game? That was killed dead by the re-seating. How does TCU get that back?

If by cynically continuing to allow reselling as essentially a for-profit enterprise just to keep their own numbers up, well, that ain't happening. I moved from 236 because of drunken fools from other fanbases. Now my new section is getting bad. Why should I continue to purchase season tickets if all I am surrounded by is drunken Tech folk*? When I call it quits, those seats go to another Member in Good Standing of the StubHub Season Ticket Brigade. Yes, TCU sold those tickets. But at what cost?






*
Tech is too easy an example, admittedly.

so if not the ticket brokers who do you want tcu to sell those tickets to or are you okay with unsold seats?
 
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