Football season ticket sales ahead of last year’s pace

Football season tickets, and the accompanying donation to the athletic fund, are a big help to the athletic department’s bottom line. So it’s good news then that, according to Stefanie Loh at the Seattle Times, season ticket sales are outpacing 2016’s rate.

At the same time last year, WSU had sold 13,500 season tickets, which was also thousands ahead of 2015. Loh reports that the school currently has 13,800 season tickets sold, about 400 short of where they ended last year (which, incidentally, was a record).

Five home games in what should be the best weather the Palouse has to offer during football season is certainly helping things: USC’s first trip to Pullman in half a decade, even on a Friday night, plus games against the Boise State Broncos and a pretty good Colorado Buffaloes squad made for an appetizing Apple Cup-less schedule.

But based on the numbers presented by Loh, at least 400 tickets weren’t renewed by the end of March deadline. Whether the people who were disinterested enough to not pick up their tickets again will do it months after the deadline passed remains to be seen but my inclination would be to say no.

So, realistically, for WSU to meet their total from last season, the school is going to need to get 400 new butts in seats before Labor Day weekend. There will also likely be a push before the end of June to get people to pick up tickets, as that’s the end of the fiscal year for CAF renewals.

That push will come in the first year the school has raised seat backs and increased the number of donation levels in more than a decade. The fact that WSU got within 400 of the record with that increase (that frankly was a long time coming) is somewhat encouraging but I’m not sure they’ll be able to hit last year’s number with said increase.

If you are thinking about picking up some tickets, the “mid-way down Section 4” crew is pretty outstanding and our own Kyle Sherwood informs me there’s still a few club seats left to snag!