Jags ticket sales lookin' good

[Basstacular]

I figured with all the negativity floating around after the draft this would be a welcomed sight.  Per Jaguars.com the ticket office is on the verge of announcing an all time high on new season ticket accounts in the offseason.  They should be above the 8,800 new accounts started in 2003, which was the previous high when they update this Thursday.  Let's not forget that it's not even May 1st yet, which Prescott is quoted as saying..."We are just at the start of the selling season".  With that in mind it looks like we are well ahead of the curve.

I have my seats and can't wait for Sept. 12th to get here.

http://www.jaguars.com/news/article.aspx?id=8917

 

[Steve]

The fuel gauge generaly updates on Thursday Afternoons.  Considering that they are reserving 8K per game for Group Sales, that leaves about 12,000 seats to sell.  Even if they don't sell out on a season ticket basis, they will probably do half-packs.  Either way, I'm cofident we get to the magic number.

http://www.jaguars.com/fuel/

[copperfiend]

The local business community is behind the team more than ever before. I feel confident as well.

[blizz01]

Maybe I'm naïve, or just a hopeful optimist, but I really feel like we could be looking at far fewer (maybe no) blackouts than many might expect this season.  I'd be VERY surprised if we're "that" team again this year with regard to low attendance.  That said, so many columnists have invested so much time & venom into the Jags moving to LA smear campaign, that it may be a tough stigma to shake for a while - just not worth writing about.  While the draft initially left me deflated, I am slowly getting over it & it really appears that we're looking at a "fresh" team on the defensive side - and could they really get any worse?  If they start revamping the secondary, we may only be  able to count the carryovers from last season on half a hand.  I still have a hunch that they have one more "impact" move up their sleeve before training camp - I hope so as like it or not, there are plenty of fans that are expecting the team to look for a pseudo mulligan.  With the exception of MJD, we still lack star power; even familiar faces that the city identified with (there were SO many with the 90's Jags).  I will continue to give Sims-Walker credit, though - he was on the news yet again spontaniously tweeting his "fans" & treating them to Dave & Buster's last night.  This is at least the second time he's done this - he picked up the movie tab for everyone that showed up a few weeks ago.  I have to respect the effort - regardless of the motives.  Maybe it's time we had a diva on the field.  Hope his on-field play backs up his personal push into the limelight this season.  The only thing that really sucks is that I'm going to have to skip a season of Madden because I can't stomach the thought of seeing Tebow on the cover in Broncos gear.

[Shwaz]

Glad to hear all the great programs & incentives are paying off! How great would be to sell out the blackout number with season ticket holders... while other teams struggle we can be removed from the conversation.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I think this is MSW's fourth night of taking fans out.  There were at least two movies and a bowling night before the D&B night.

I don't think we'll shake the stigma anytime soon, even if the blackouts are lifted this year (which I expect will happen) and other teams are blacked out (a near given with Tampa, Oakland, Detroit and maybe others).  There were sportswriters referring to the stands as being "empty" in Jacksonville and making LA smear comments even with the near-miss blackouts in 2007 where there were 64,000 people in the seats.  Already sportswriters are writing entirely speculative columns saying not taking Tebow = no increase in sales, even though the season ticket base is already significantly larger than last year's; and I've at least twice seen in national publications/websites that we're "giving tickets away," based on nothing.  Certain writers have just had a vendetta against Jacksonville for some years since they were embarrassed over getting the 1993 expansion campaign all wrong, or were offended that they weren't sufficiently pampered with the 2005 Super Bowl.  And many of them are just lazy and can collect a paycheck writing inane, tired jokes about a smaller market in the South regardless of their veracity.

[Basstacular]

Winning will eventually cure everything and Gene Smith is doing it the right way.  If you haven't had a chance to read about, hear on the radio or even meet some of the players he has brought in over the last two seasons then I can promise you you would be proud to have a GM who values character and rewards good guys with the opportunity to play in the NFL.

As a life long Jacksonville resident and die-hard Jags fan I am so proud of this franchise as the face of our City.  Here's to a great 2010 and all the haters will just have to miss out on something speacial.

[JagFan07]

From a waiting list of 100K to risk of blackouts. Wonder if the media will start talking about the LA Bucs

http://www.tampabay.com/sports/football/bucs/article1082399.ece

[Tripoli1711]

"Based on where we're at today," Glazer said, ". . . realistically, we are staring at having games blacked out in our local market. I bring that up because I don't want people to be surprised when they get to September and . . . the game is not on TV. It's not what we want.


-->Wayne Weaver made almost an identical statement last year about this time, and he was absolutely skewered for it by the media.

At one point last season, although maintaining the games were indeed sold out, the Bucs had an actual attendance of less than 50,000 in the 65,890-seat stadium. Glazer said the team distributed thousands of tickets to local sponsors and charitable groups to avoid local television blackouts.


--> Something the Jaguars used to do earlier in the decade.


In an effort to increase ticket sales, the Bucs have lowered prices for next season. Tickets start as low as $35 per seat per game, and youth tickets are $25. But so far, nothing has worked.

-->  They're all but giving away tickets.

Lest we forget the ACC Championship Game... taken from Jacksonville amid ridicule.

How about on a beautiful Tampa day in 2008?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/2008ACCCGMostly_empty_stands.JPG

Don't even get started looking at attendance for Rays games when they aren't playing Boston or NY

Jacksonville has a lot of problems with ticket sales, etc.  I say none of this to shift the focus from what we as a community need to do to support the Jaguars, but the free pass Tampa gets is really amazing..

[duvaldude08]

From a waiting list of 100K to risk of blackouts. Wonder if the media will start talking about the LA Bucs

http://www.tampabay.com/sports/football/bucs/article1082399.ece

I guess they are moving to LA next huh? It is so sad that the NFL and media threw us under the bus, and everyone else is having the same problem this year, and out ticket sales are on the rise. I wish they would just leave jacksonville alone.

[Wacca Pilatka]

Winning will eventually cure everything and Gene Smith is doing it the right way.  If you haven't had a chance to read about, hear on the radio or even meet some of the players he has brought in over the last two seasons then I can promise you you would be proud to have a GM who values character and rewards good guys with the opportunity to play in the NFL.

As a life long Jacksonville resident and die-hard Jags fan I am so proud of this franchise as the face of our City.  Here's to a great 2010 and all the haters will just have to miss out on something speacial.

Me too.  I am not from Jacksonville but love it and stand up for it constantly, and that is the reason I root for the Jaguars.  It's incredibly gratifying that the team I back for reasons of geography has so many first-class employees, and that extends the owner, front office, and ticket office.  I doubt there is another franchise in pro sports that gives more of itself to its fans.

[Tripoli1711]

I don't think the NFL has thrown the Jaguars under the bus.  By and large I think the league has been very good to Jacksonville.  Giving us the team was a huge leap of faith that, honestly, hasn't really paid off.  Giving us the Super Bowl was awesome, but in all honesty rather laughable.  Look at the typical sites:  New Orleans, Miami, Phoenix, and then ask if you were someone from Chicago or Seattle, would you rather go to a Super Bowl in New Orleans or Jacksonville?

Overall the NFL has been good to Jacksonville.  The national football media, not so much.  But the problem is our own making.  If the butts were in the seats and the tarps were off the upper deck, there wouldn't be any bad national press about our ticket sales...

[Wacca Pilatka]

Jacksonville has a lot of problems with ticket sales, etc.  I say none of this to shift the focus from what we as a community need to do to support the Jaguars, but the free pass Tampa gets is really amazing..

Of course, blackouts were routine for the Bucs through most of the 80s and up to the mid-90s.  Vic Ketchman also noted that in their inaugural season, they sold more than 40,000 tickets for only one or two games, so even the honeymoon effect didn't help them much at the time.  Of course, the NFL's economic model has changed such that Jacksonville's one year of bad ticket sales has a more profound effect than the Bucs' and Cardinals' and Falcons' and Bengals' years and years of blackouts and 30,000-ish in the stands in the 80s and/or 90s.  Or the golden boy Patriots' 1992 season where the season ticket base was something like 17k.

But lazy sportswriters have been to Busch Gardens and don't even realize that Jacksonville has a beach, so Jacksonville is the poster child in the press for ticket sales problems rather than Tampa.  And just watch, even if the Jaguars avoid blackouts all year (highly possible) and the Bucs experience multiple blackouts (likely), that trend will probably continue.  The vast majority of sportswriters don't care for research and care even less for correcting their casual errors.

[duvaldude08]

I don't think the NFL has thrown the Jaguars under the bus.  By and large I think the league has been very good to Jacksonville.  Giving us the team was a huge leap of faith that, honestly, hasn't really paid off.  Giving us the Super Bowl was awesome, but in all honesty rather laughable.  Look at the typical sites:  New Orleans, Miami, Phoenix, and then ask if you were someone from Chicago or Seattle, would you rather go to a Super Bowl in New Orleans or Jacksonville?

Overall the NFL has been good to Jacksonville.  The national football media, not so much.  But the problem is our own making.  If the butts were in the seats and the tarps were off the upper deck, there wouldn't be any bad national press about our ticket sales...

Yeah I agree. Then too, other teams have experienced the same problems in the past and nothing was said. But I think that our ticket sales woes and the big "LA move" rumors all came together at the wrong time. I can not afford to buy season tickets, but I am planning on buying individual games tickets and attending some games. We dont support our team, who else will? Go JAGS!!!!!!

[JagFan07]

The NFL likes not having a team in LA. Gives them leverage. I was 12 and in the stands of the old Gator Bowl when Irsay was courting Jacksonville to relocate the Colts. Even then they were using LA for leverage.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RA0OAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UnwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4339,351206&hl=en