Jaguars ticket sales ahead of 2007 pace. No need for panic.
With all of the hoopla surrounding the Jacksonville Jaguars, local media has had to resort to spinning things in any way possible to paint the situation with ticket sales in a negative light.
The Jaguars currently have fewer than 4,000 non-premium season tickets remaining in order to declare the 2008 season a sell-out, avoiding blackouts. This number has been touted as being behind the pace for ticket sales in 2006 when the local media has reported on this. What has not been reported is that the team is actually ahead of their numbers for 2007. Renewals are up by 10% over previous years, and the number of tickets that need to be sold in order to avoid blackouts is smaller than the threshold that the team had to contend with last year.
Because of the way this number has been spun locally, the Jaguars continue to pop up in national articles talking about teams relocating to Los Angeles. They are listed with teams like Minnesota or Buffalo as “at risk” franchises that could wind up playing on the west coast in the next few years.
It is the time of the year on the NFL calendar when the volume of information that is deemed to be newsworthy dwindles to a trickle, so naturally, the second largest media market in the country rises on the priority list as people try to offer their guess as to how Los Angeles will re-enter the exclusive fraternity of NFL cities.
Meanwhile, encouraging stories about how the fan base in Jacksonville continues to grow despite a struggling economy fall through the cracks. That is hardly worth noting. There is no glamour or glitz attached with a positive angle on a story. It is much easier to push a story that portrays a situation in a negative light.
As this negativity continues to spread, it starts to permeate the local psyche. Fans that are on the fence over ticket purchases might allow media reports to influence their decision one way or the other. The battle to get those last tickets sold becomes even more difficult if fans start to think that it is not worth the investment because the team is not long for this town.
In local talk radio circles, this is great fodder. One show dedicated an entire hour this morning to how this guest host (who was actually broadcasting from Orlando, still thought Ernest Wilford was on the depth chart, and believed the Jaguars were dealing with selling out an 80,000 seat stadium) thought the Jaguars should address this crisis. His idea was simple. Discount the remaining 4,000 tickets to get them sold. Make those heavy discounts, selling the seats in the $10-15 range. His belief was that the Jaguars make plenty of money and ticket sales are such a minor piece of their revenue puzzle that it would have little impact on their bottom line.
It is precisely this type of bad information that ultimately frustrates even the most loyal of fans. The Jaguars do a miserably inept job of communicating their situation to the general public, leaving all of the media outlets to speculate, allowing these stories to fester and grow beyond the reality. Then, when the information is so incorrect that people have no idea what the truth is, the team finally sends out their minions to pass along as little information as possible in an effort to appease the masses.
If the Jaguars did a better job of communicating their situation up front, there would be less attention paid to the ticket sales situation to begin with. But, most of the dealings involving the business side of the franchise are so shrouded in secrecy that it requires an act of congress to get at the root of the story.
What we know right now is that the Jaguars have around 4,000 tickets left to avoid blackouts. The Jaguars published that number nearly three weeks ago, and no updates have been shared with the media or general public since, so how accurate that figure is remains to be seen.
What we also know is that the renewal rates were up by double digits this year. Again, that is positive news, but hardly ever referenced with regard to ticket sales.
We are also aware of the fact that the team is ahead of their sales pace for 2007. The combination of a better schedule, a deeper playoff run, and heightened speculation about how good the team will be this year has fans more willing to get on the bandwagon this year than in seasons past.
Going back to the talk show host and his suggestions, he felt that if the Jaguars simply took his advice, they would sell out the 2008 season within hours. The reality is that if you suddenly slash the cost of the tickets that remain in an effort to entice people to buy them, it would set into motion a chain of events that would almost certainly impact the team in a negative light.
First, the revenue stream is impacted by lower ticket costs. With the revenue sharing program that is currently being employed by the National Football League, teams have to hit a very specific threshold in order to qualify fully for the program. The Jaguars have to match 90% of the average league revenue in order to fully qualify for the sharing. By cutting ticket prices, the team is put even further behind the curve in their efforts to reach that target.
Second, those fans that have been loyal season ticket holders for several years, accepting the dramatic increase of their ticket prices over the past few years and remaining committed to the team would be hard pressed to contain their anger when the guy sitting next to them bought a discounted ticket for the same seat that they paid full price for. When renewals come around in 2009, that type of issue can turn a long-time season ticket holder into another lost fan. Why should they renew their seats if they can simply sit on their hands and wait for the team to discount the tickets?
Over the past few years, the Jaguars have been trying to streamline their ticket packages in an effort to make it easier for them to manage. By adding this new discounted program that this particular talk show host suggested, they would once again add another layer that would require additional management.
It would create a public relations nightmare for a team that is currently building the fan base in the right manner by doing it slowly.
The Jaguars ticket office and marketing operation are far from top shelf. They clearly have made many mistakes over the years that have been a great source of frustration for the fans. If they decided to pull the trigger on a program that would discount the remaining season tickets in an effort to get them sold, they will lose a portion of the fans that are considered loyal to the core as a result. This is such a bad idea.
The Jaguars need to do a better job of communicating their situation. They need to do a better job of marketing the team to expand the footprint of the fan base beyond the local Jacksonville television market. The organization needs to put more effort into developing the local fan base by appealing to the youth in the area that will become future season ticket holders. They have made strides in each of these areas, but there is clearly still much work to be done if the team continues to be mentioned any time speculation begins to arise about teams being relocated to Los Angeles.
Until they find a way to squash this buzz once and for all, they will have a difficult time trying to get the fans here in Jacksonville to fully embrace the team.
For the fans that are sweating the media reports harboring news of gloom and doom for the franchise, just remember that it is June. No blackouts are announced in June.
