Georgia Tech has demonstrated, once again, perhaps the most obvious truth in sports ticket sales — nothing sells like winning.
With a little more than two months remaining before the football season opener, Tech has sold about 22,000 season tickets, nearly reaching its goal of 22,500. The renewal rate for season-ticket holders from 2015 is 92 percent, and more sales are expected as the season approaches. The athletic department also received new orders for another 3,000 season tickets. Tech sold about 21,000 last year.
Associate athletic director for finance and administration Marvin Lewis reported the numbers Thursday at the Tech athletic association’s final board meeting of the 2014-15 academic year.
While the strong home schedule — with games at Bobby Dodd Stadium against Georgia, Florida State and Virginia Tech — has contributed to the strong sales, undoubtedly the Yellow Jackets’ Orange Bowl championship season and their prospects for 2015 have factored.
The growth bucks trends both at Tech and nationally, as both professional and college sports teams have struggled to maintain season ticket sales in the face of fans’ preference to purchase tickets on a game-by-game basis and the competition provided by the home-viewing experience.
The department projects $13 million in ticket sales for all sports for the coming school year, about 17 percent of the $76 million budget. That’s well ahead of the 2014-15 ticket sales total of $9.7 million.
Tech will need every penny that coach Paul Johnson’s team can bring in. As is typically the case, the budget for fiscal year 2016 projects to break even. For the closing fiscal year, the department projects a $2.2 million surplus, but would have posted a $400,000 deficit if not for an unbudgeted $2.6 million distribution from the ACC as part of its settlement with Maryland for leaving the conference for the Big Ten.
Further, the coming year will include an additional $1.5 million in new expenses, including $470,000 for the new cost-of-attendance stipends to be given to scholarship athletes, a 9 percent tuition increase and higher costs for charter flights since Delta is no longer in the regional charter business.
To help control costs, the department underwent a zero-based budgeting process for the coming year in which each team and office had to create and justify a budget from scratch to help examine expenses.
“It wasn’t fun for many of our coaches and staff, but it was definitely needed,” said Lewis, a former Tech basketball standout.
On a related note, athletic director Mike Bobinski reiterated the department and school’s interest in seeking to stage concerts such as the Rolling Stones show held at Bobby Dodd Stadium on June 9, the first concert held there since 1994. The concert netted Tech $300,000, about $50,000 more than original estimates.
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