NCAAs not sold out???

[Dark Energy]

Listening to ‘Wrestling Changed My Life’ podcast.  Very clear that no session was sold out.  WTF?  

Ok.  Strike Tulsa.   Oklahoma people … lame.

 

 

[Jimmy Cinnabon]

Would have helped if Ok St and Oklahoma were bigger title threats.  The state is in a major downswing for wrestling.

[Idaho]

1 hour ago, Dark Energy said:

Listening to ‘Wrestling Changed My Life’ podcast.  Very clear that no session was sold out.  WTF?  

Ok.  Strike Tulsa.   Oklahoma people … lame.

 

 

There were empty seats for sure.... even for the finals we had a scattering of empty seats around us.   I did hear there were some flight cancellations and problems for people getting to Tulsa, but I don't know how that affected final numbers. It was interesting to hear Bono say that during his time there wasn't nearly the crowds they are getting now for the NCAA. 

[ionel]

1 hour ago, Dark Energy said:

Listening to ‘Wrestling Changed My Life’ podcast.  Very clear that no session was sold out.  WTF?  

Ok.  Strike Tulsa.   Oklahoma people … lame.

 

 

Don't know why you are blaming Oklahoma folks, this is an NCAA issue.  They used to allocate more tickets to individual programs.  I heard a lot of grumbling from folks who had not recieved tickets, didn't know where they were sitting etc, believe clear up to or just after conference.  There's plenty of demand from true wrestling fans who are also willing to travel, but they need access early to make plans.  

[jdowntown]

Where were these extra tickets? I don't have any ties to a program to get the insider tickets. I called half a dozen different school ticket offices, none of them knew how many tickets they were getting until March, and in the end none had extra tickets to sell to me. Ticketmaster and stubhub only had stupid expensive tickets or very crappy seats in the corners and high up. I love the championships enough to fly there without tickets and found some decent seats from someone out front. But seriously I should not have had to do that with how many empty seats there were. Something is broken with the system.

[MPhillips]

If only Tulsa wasn't in Tulsa...

 

I left Oklahoma, drivin' in a Pontiac
Just about to lose my mind
I was goin' to Arizona
Maybe on to California
Where the people all live so fine.
 

[LJB]

one of the kids and his crew went out there on a whim and everyone got tickets no problem thursday morning...

 

[Dogbone]

I don't know that they weren't "sold" but they were definitely all not used.  I would guess that ticket brokers gobbled up the public tickets early and then tried to flip them for $1000+ profit but didn't get many people to bite. 
 

I think most of the unused tickets where in the upper bowl, but I think @jdowntown has the problem correct.   My understanding was that the NCAA didn't allocate the schools tickets until late Feb/early March so even people who normally get tickets didn't know until late if they had tickets or how many and then throw in that Ticketmaster stops selling all session tickets altogether (so they can get fees on all 6 sessions individually), there didn't seem to really be a reasonable secondary market until very late.    We looked Wednesday on ticketmaster/stubhub and it appeared the secondary market had finally come back down to reality.   

[ionel]

22 minutes ago, MPhillips said:

If only Tulsa wasn't in Tulsa...

 

I left Oklahoma, drivin' in a Pontiac
Just about to lose my mind
I was goin' to Arizona
Maybe on to California
Where the people all live so fine.
 

I used to have a Pontiac. 

[ScarletKnight]

Crazy.  What was the hardest ticket to get ever, Cleveland?  

[Red Blades]

Well, I never been to heaven
But I been to Oklahoma
Oh, they tell me I was born there
But I really don't remember
In Oklahoma, not Arizona
What does it matter?
What does it matter?

[ionel]

36 minutes ago, ScarletKnight said:

Crazy.  What was the hardest ticket to get ever, Cleveland?  

I had no trouble getting Cleveland, prob because they allocated enough early to individual programs.

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, ScarletKnight said:

Crazy.  What was the hardest ticket to get ever, Cleveland?  

Cleveland wasn't difficult for me.  Pittsburgh was the only year recently I tried to get tickets and could not.

3 hours ago, ionel said:

There's plenty of demand from true wrestling fans who are also willing to travel, but they need access early to make plans.  

I think Is part of the issue.  Flights to Tulsa were more scarce than other host cities.  By the time conference came around they were pretty dang expensive or impossible to get if you were looking for a Wednesday-Sunday travel schedule.  Tulsa airport is probably the smallest for a host city since 2013.

[BobDole]

There are always empty seats, especially for the finals as some people head home after their guys lose. I didn't notice it was any less full for the finals than it usually is.

[ionel]

5 minutes ago, BobDole said:

There are always empty seats, especially for the finals as some people head home after their guys lose. I didn't notice it was any less full for the finals than it usually is.

Are you suggesting Spencer's mom didn't stay for the finals?  Was there a braille option on the Espn app?

[AOCStallsLikeAMug]

No one wants to go to the GD midwest/Great Plains. Stop putting the finals there.

[BobDole]

25 minutes ago, AOCStallsLikeAMug said:

No one wants to go to the GD midwest/Great Plains. Stop putting the finals there.

But no one in Iowa wants to go on a plane either. Something about not letting them take their shotguns.

[Perry]

1 hour ago, AOCStallsLikeAMug said:

No one wants to go to the GD midwest/Great Plains. Stop putting the finals there.

St Louis sells out almost every year they host it

[Southend]

Hotels were more of an issue than event tickets. I gave my all session tickets up. Couldn’t find reasonable accommodations in town. 

[scribers]

5 hours ago, LJB said:

one of the kids and his crew went out there on a whim and everyone got tickets no problem thursday morning...

 

At the box office, or off the street?

[LJB]

Just now, scribers said:

At the box office, or off the street?

no clue...

didn't seem important enough to ask...

thursday i sent a text and he said they were in the building...

to be honest, i doubt they bought them...

[Frank Scrivener]

I sell tickets on the side. First 3 sessions did not sell out. Other sessions "sold out", but still a decent amount of tickets left on the secondary market. Last minute tickets were available for as low as $5 on Thursday. 

I'm also from Oklahoma.... Tulsa is still quite a ways behind okc for event hosting. Also, the above-mentioned fact about Oklahoma schools being down is a MAJOR thing.

[Dogbone]

 

Attendance was 16,855 for the finals.   95,245 overall (15,874/session). 

BOK capacity for center stage (similar to a finals set up) is 19K; Capacity for Arena Football (comparable to an 8 mat set up) is 16.5K.

With the head table  and extra floor space, etc, I assume the capacity might of been less than I stated above (center state/arena football capacity numbers) but there was certainly more than the usual amount of unused tickets every session, including the finals.  

For comparison PPG in Pittsburgh list the Arena Football capacity at 16.3K and the total attendance in 2019 was 109,405

 

[ScarletKnight]

5 hours ago, fishbane said:

Cleveland wasn't difficult for me.  Pittsburgh was the only year recently I tried to get tickets and could not.

I think Is part of the issue.  Flights to Tulsa were more scarce than other host cities.  By the time conference came around they were pretty dang expensive or impossible to get if you were looking for a Wednesday-Sunday travel schedule.  Tulsa airport is probably the smallest for a host city since 2013.

Cleveland didn't have many scalpers after Thursday.  Yeah I remember Pittsburgh being hard.

[TexRef]

6 hours ago, Frank Scrivener said:

I sell tickets on the side. First 3 sessions did not sell out. Other sessions "sold out", but still a decent amount of tickets left on the secondary market. Last minute tickets were available for as low as $5 on Thursday. 

I'm also from Oklahoma.... Tulsa is still quite a ways behind okc for event hosting. Also, the above-mentioned fact about Oklahoma schools being down is a MAJOR thing.

I bought $5 tickets when it was in OKC and I might have paid $10 for a Finals ticket.