This story about marketing Georgia Tech season tickets is almost too funny for words. Almost.
… Georgia Tech is hoping Aspire will be able to continue a success story that associate athletics director Wayne Hogan and Aspire GM Fagan were eager to tell during a presentation in mid-June at the College Athletic Business Management Association convention in Orlando.
Standing before a packed meeting room, Hogan explained the humbling experience that led the school to hire Aspire, and Fagan discussed how its system works.
Coming to Georgia Tech in 2006, Hogan said he figured selling the Yellow Jackets in a huge metropolitan area “ought to be a piece of cake. If I can’t do this, I’m in the wrong business.”
Three years later — surrounded by the economic slowdown, four pro teams in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in nearby Athens — Hogan “out of desperation” met with Aspire CEO Bernie Mullen, who had formed his firm after working as an executive in college sports and with teams in the NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball.
The “is hoping” kind of foreshadows the punchline.
… Even with Aspire, Georgia Tech’s football season-ticket sales have decreased from 26,308 in 2009 to 22,848 so far in 2011, Hogan says.
However, because the firm seeks only new sales — not renewals — it has “turned what would have been a monumental decline into a moderate decline,” Hogan says…
For Tech, that constitutes a raging success story. Hopefully that means it should still be fairly easy for Georgia fans to get ahold of tickets for the game at BDS this year.
Get The Picture 
Maybe they should partner with Chick-Fil-A.
Oh, nevermind.
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Saved or Created nearly 23,000 season tickets. Obamametrics says this is a true success story!
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Thats Funny
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Hey, Tech fans think they’ve turned the tide in the UGA-GT rivalry if they win one game against us in eight tries. So I guess it figures they’d see a “moderate decline” as a raging success.
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Glorious Tech Football Victorious Over Evil Georgia Reactionaries! We Will March On For Great Justice!
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I wonder where in the Aspire playbook it recommends: Strip search loyal season ticket holders and humiliate them to the point where they no longer want to buy tickets. Lucky for them this is one of those years when UGA plays at the Joke By Coke, which is always a boost to ticket sales. Are the mini-packs on sale yet?
No wonder they think Paul Johnson is such a football genius. If losing 10% of your base (after the “upgrade” at the coaching position, too) is a success story, Fish Fry probably looks like Vincent J Lombardi to the nerd faithful.
Brace for plummeting season ticket sales!
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In defense of the security guards at Tech, they don’t see many females. They had no idea what those “lumps” under her shirt were and had to go see for themselves.
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For grins & giggles, my wife keeps a coupon from a recent Val-Pak in her purse. The coupon is for GTU football tickets that proclaims “Buy 3, get 1 free! “. In fine print at the bottom: ” Georgia game excluded”
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I think we need to start talking about playing more of the games in Athens just to screw with GT’s budget projections.
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Seriously, Tech. Give up.
And enjoy the trip to play in Murfreesboro.
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I recall a marketing presentation when sales figures were down 1 or 2%, the young MBA explained to management that we were “up versus trend”. This sounds like familiar spin to me, although I like this decline better!
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Why haven’t they packaged with DragaonCon tix?
I swear, I could sell Tech better than they can.
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+1 and throw in the Harry Potter book series.
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Hey GT, just go with a sweepstakes!
First place, 2 tickets to a home game.
2nd place, 4 tickets.
3rd place, season tickets.
Last place, sideline pass and 1 hour with Paul Johnson.
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Reminds me of a joke somebody told back in the early ’80s when the Saints were beyond miserable. Guy had two tickets to the Saints game that weekend but he couldn’t stomach the thought of witnessing another loss, so he parked his car on the street and left the two tickets under his windshield wiper for anyone to come by and take. When he came back to his car that evening, there were four.
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Isn’t there a similar story to this EVERY year?
The last story that I heard was about “street teams” that roam downtown on Friday nights before a home game and try to sell tix to drunk partiers. Can you imagine the shame and remorse of waking up on Saturday morning with a pair of GT Tix lying next to you.
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Maybe they should start the “Coyote Bowl”. All one-armed males and females enter free! No arms? Have to have tickets held in the teeth.
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How about having Russell Athletic come up with a Pro Combat gimmick for the Jackets? For the Georgia game, Tech wears Starfleet uniforms!
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Or these:
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Ha. Does that package come with a strip search?
http://georgiasports.blogspot.com/2011/08/tech-customer-service-skills.html
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Another Tech gem that awaits our warranted abuse:
“Vibrating Glove Boosts Fingertip’s Sense of Touch”
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/vibrating-glove-touch/
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I just love the shock of the marketing rep that nobody cares about Georgia Tech athletics. I could have told him that the first day on the job.
Guess it’s only a matter of time until they start removing seats again. What other program in America reduces their foootball capacity?
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