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Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke and director of ticket sales Ben Smith met the media Tuesday, and here's what they had to say about Pitt-Penn State, ticket sales and more.
Lyke: We wanted to share some great news obviously about our Pitt-Penn State game, and that is that we are officially sold out for the game on Saturday, September 8th. We all know it’s going to be an incredible 99th game of this rivalry, 8:00 p.m.on ABC. We are certainly really excited about it and grateful to all of our fans and loyal supporters who have purchased all the season tickets. I want to thank our students and I think it’s going to be an extraordinary night for the students at Pitt to be a part of that electric atmosphere. I know our coaches and student-athletes obviously are working incredibly hard to prepare for that game, but they are also equally thankful for the support and the excitement that is going to come to Heinz Field on September 8th.
To everybody out there that’s coming to that game, that’s an incredible opportunity - I do want to direct you that if you are going to look to the secondary market for ticket options, we have formed a formal partnership with StubHub. So we want people to know that that is a very safe and secure place to purchase tickets for the Pitt-Penn State game on the secondary market. I also want to let you know that we have five other home games this fall at Heinz Field and there are opportunities to purchase tickets for those particular games. We want to encourage people to come to the other five home games as well.
Smith: The biggest thing for us, I’d say, is we have created an extension with our partners, our ticketing partners with Paciolan. What that’s going to do for our fans is it’s going to allow them to take advantage of a lot of things that they haven’t been able to take advantage of on gameday, which includes the option to use mobile tickets - we’re slowing rolling that out to fans knowing that’s something new for us on gameday and for the operations team on gameday.
One of the things that we’ve been unable to do on gameday is, we generally can’t sell tickets through online venues for Pitt football games. The only way to purchase in the past was on walk-up three hours prior to game time. So now we can sell all the way up until kickoff through our online avenues which is a huge enhancement, because what I think a lot of our fans would sometimes do is they would go online and look for our game and it wasn’t there. Maybe they weren’t purchasing, maybe they didn’t make the assumption that they could come down and purchase at Heinz Field. That’s going to be one major enhancement.
Additionally those fans through this StubHub partnership, our season ticket holders can list any unavailable inventory for sale on StubHub. As you guys might have been aware of, StubHub had to come down three hours prior to our games as well. So now StubHub will be able to sell all the way up until kickoff. One of the things we really hope that this is going to do for us is that it’s going to enhance the actual ticket usage for gamedays. We’re hoping that more fans are going to utilize their tickets leading into gameday and so that we’ll have a higher usage rate for fans on gameday. Additionally, you’re going to have fans take advantage of ticket transfers. So if it’s an hour before kickoff and you realize you’ve got an extra ticket and you want to transfer it to your friends and family - you can do that. If you are in the parking lot and you are tailgating and you drop your ticket, you can go online and you can reprint your own ticket through your “My account” page. So those are two things that our fans have never been able to do before in those hours leading up to kickoff and so we’re really excited we’re going to be able to provide that to them.
How has the response been to the student section moving spots this year?
Lyke: I think it’s going to be very well received. The student section, we have about 10,000 tickets allocated to them and I think we’re at about 8,500 sold in the student section. It’s an intentional change that we made to move the students. Instead of the student section being stacked on top of one another in that west end zone, now they will span across the end zone and create a more unified look and feel and experience for our students. They’ll all be on the lower level section in the end zone ready for our touchdowns.
What are the expectations of percentages between Pitt and Penn State fans?
Lyke: It’s hard to know. My expectation is that it’s going to be a blue and gold night and it’s going to be filled with a lot of Panther fans. I wasn’t here two years ago, but that is what my great colleagues tell me that the place was packed and filled with a lot of Pitt Panthers, and that’s what we want and are excited to see. Obviously there’s a lot of Penn State fans that are relatively close, so I’m sure there’s going to be a decent showing, but there’s no way to really tell. But I expect our Panthers to outnumber and out cheer Penn State.
Do you have numbers on season tickets total from last year to this year?
Smith: We’re at about 50,000 season tickets for this year, which would include the 10,000 that we have allotted to our students as well. It’s definitely up from last year, that’s for certain. From 2016 we’re actually tracking a little bit behind of where we did in 2016 and that’s kind of by design. We wanted to be able to provide additional seats to our season ticket holders through those additional requests that they have for Penn State. So different from 2016, we were able to actually fulfill all the requests from our season ticket holders which was something that we wanted to accomplish this year. In 2016, we had to turn a lot of people away from additional seats. So again, trying to ensure the tickets are in the hands of our season ticket holders, as best we can, to make sure when people show up that it’s blue and gold on that Saturday.
Is there any kind of update on men’s basketball season ticket sales?
Smith: For comparison, we’re probably just about shy of one-thousand new season tickets for men’s basketball, which is significantly far and away, a drastic improvement from what we saw last year for new season ticket sales. We had a great renewal process with our season ticket holders. The feedback, obviously the phone conversations are heck of a lot different for us this year than they were last year. So it’s been really encouraging. It’s still going to be a process with any of that kind of stuff for us, but we’ve got a marketing team that’s doing a fantastic job. Coach Capel’s been amazing to work with. He came out and he met with our fan experience committee and spent 30 minutes talking with them and shaking hands and that stuff is really important. The head coach is selling tickets just as much as anybody else within the department.
Lyke: He spent time with the Oakland Zoo. We all had a gathering, and certainly the importance of the students for both if you are in the Panther Pitt or the Oakland Zoo is essential. I don’t know if there’s anything like the uniqueness of college athletics is that the students that are part of this university get to experience it and get to be a big part of our gameday experience. So I know Coach Capel spent time with the Oakland Zoo, Coach Narduzzi with the Panther Pitt and those relationships are terrific.
Have you thought about standing room tickets?
Lyke: I understand that that was available in ’16. It’s definitely something that we’ll evaluate as the date gets closer and make a decision on whether or not that’s something we want to do. It is possible and we’ll evaluate that as the date gets closer and the demand is evaluated.
