Tennessee’s successful basketball start has ticket sales soaring
“I think we’re trying to capitalize on some stocking stuffers,” Chris Fuller, assistant athletic director for sales and marketing, said Friday. “We’re making the best out of what we hope is an anomaly on the football side.”
Meanwhile, merchants are just trying to get rid of their harder-to-sell football gear by marking it down to make room for something new. Basketball jerseys might be a good item to stock, and Lady Vols stuff usually sells well during the season.
Excitement has been growing since the hiring of Pearl to replace Buzz Peterson, who failed to take the Vols to the NCAA tournament and went 14-17 last season.
So far Tennessee has already sold more individual game tickets than all of last season. Fans have bought 25,511 tickets through the first four home games and including some ticket packages with games not yet played, Fuller said. Last year, there were 17,842 individual tickets sold. Neither number includes season tickets.
Vols suffered their first lost of the season Thursday night, 89-73 to Oklahoma State, after winning their first six games. That streak included a surprising 95-78 victory at No. 6 Texas last week that vaulted Tennessee to No. 23, its first appearance in the rankings since late in the 2000-01 season.
“I think people have really gotten excited by the way the team plays,” Fuller said. “People have asked if (Thursday) night hurt you. If we had won that game it helps us. … I don’t think anything about the way we played that game hurts us at all.”
Student attendance also is way up. Last year, there were 9,147 student tickets distributed all season, an average of 575 students a game. Already this season, it’s up to 4,671 through four home games to average 1,160, Fuller said.
With students away for Christmas break, Tennessee is offering a ticket package for the next three home games with seats in the lower level for $24. It includes Alabama A&M on Dec. 27, Lipscomb on Dec. 29 and South Alabama on Jan. 4 and a Pearl bobblehead. Almost 200 packages had sold by Monday, the latest figures Fuller had available.
The basketball team’s success is good news for Fuller and the athletic department after the football team’s lump-of-coal holiday gift — a 5-6 record and no bowl. The Vol Network, which broadcasts basketball and football games, normally sells a highlight video for each season, but not this one.
The early kickoffs and losses hurt area stores that sell UT merchandise.
“It was a most disappointing retail season,” said Donna Kendrick, owner of McMillin’s two stores, including one on the Strip by campus.
However, she said her total sales are up because of the popularity of Lady Vols’ items, which has accounted for about 95 percent of their Internet sales.
Hound Dogs, another UT retailer with six stores in the area, said a drop in sales was “noticeable” during the season. But she reported on Friday, “We are crazy,” with the sound of the cash register drawer rolling out and shutting in the background.
The athletic department tracked its merchandise sales on campus each game and found things were going well until halftime of the Georgia game, when the Vols lost 27-14, Fuller said. That was the start of the Vols’ four-game losing streak.
Kendrick said she doesn’t blame the football team for the drop in sales.
“I can’t think those kids didn’t try as hard as they knew how to try. It was like the perfect storm. It was a combination of a bad home schedule, horrible-for-retailers start times and then a losing season,” she said. “For me the losing season was the least significant of the three things.”
——
On the Net:
Tennessee sports: http://www.utsports.com