We began as a group of students who were upset with the athletic ticketing policies at the University of Wisconsin. A couple of us were unsure as to whether or not we would be able to get football student tickets as seniors. This emotion towards the issue is what fueled our project. However, throughout the course of our research our position focus began to shift. In comparing the University of Wisconsin’s policies to those of other schools in the Big Ten Conference we have found that UW’s policies are fairly comparable. Neither ticket prices nor the size of the student sections appear to be out of line. We also conducted a survey and found that in general students are unhappy with the ticketing process and size of the student section at UW athletic events. Our purpose is to make sure that students are informed when seeking change in UW’s policies. In this project we are also exploring other options that students have for access to Badger athletics if they are not able to attend games, such as the Big Ten Network. We invite and appreciate your feedback. Our project can be viewed at http://badgersportsaccess.wetpaint.com/
Jaclyn E
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Overall I think your project idea is very compelling and clearly relevant to a lot of people. It appears as if your group is well organized and has a clear direction of where the project is headed. I thought that the website was very impressive and appeared to bring a lot of information together in one place for anyone interested in the ticketing process.
ReplyDeleteI am a huge fan of Badger sports and have had many discussions/debates/arguments about what would be the best process for athletic ticketing. During these debates there have been many different scenarios that have been suggested that seem like they may help fix some of the problems that students have had with the ticketing process. It seems as if your group started with the goal of addressing these changes and coming up with a solution, but then changed to a much more informative/exploratory approach. I think you could still do this while presenting some of these different proposals and maybe suggesting some of the pros and cons of each. I know that the athletic department spent a great deal of time with the issue just last year so setting up an interview with an administrator could provide some intriguing insight as to why the university made the changes they did. I'm not suggesting changing the motive of your website because I think that it is a great idea and is already very impressive, but an addition about the some of the other ticketing options the university considered last year would be really interesting. Another interesting angle that could be looked into would be student ticket resale. I'm not sure exactly how you would do this, but for both football and basketball tickets the resale of student tickets for prices that greatly exceed face value appears to be a problem.
I think that your website, in its current state, is a great start to the project. As I am very interested in the topic, I am really excited to see the final result. It is organized, easy to find information, and should end up being a very valuable resource to the informed fan. Good luck with future research and compilation; I really like what you have so far.
I really liked your presentation. I know that student ticket sales and availability are very hot topics among students. I have had no particular troubles with the ticketing system thus far. I transferred to UW this year and still ended up getting basketball tickets. I do agree that seniors should get priority over other students, just because I will be mad if I don't get football tickets next year.
ReplyDeleteOverall I think this project is really great. I think it would be cool to see what other students think about your website and the comparisons made to other big 10 schools. Whenever I have a conversation about ticket sales here at UW the small student section in relation to Michigan’s always comes up. What is interesting about your project and website is that you can actually see that the ratios of capacity and student tickets available really aren't that different between the two schools. I also like that for each survey question you have a chart to go along with the responses. Your question on whether or not you have been denied tickets is the most shocking. The survey shows that not as many people actually get denied as it seems.
I do agree with Alex’s post. The most interesting information that you guys have is the differences between the Big 10 schools and the possible options for new ticket sales. I think it would be interesting if you focused on that and maybe made an outline of different ticket sales options, possibly seeing if other schools would work for UW, and then showing the cause and effects of each. I think this way students would get a clearer picture of what changes would come in to effect if the ticket process was changed. I also think it would be interesting to look at the changes that have been previously made and how they affected the university. I personally don’t know how long the current ticket process has been used and it may be interesting to see the difference between ticket processes used here at UW.
It might also be interesting to see more interaction between students and your website. So we could see the opinions of other people. Maybe you should try to encourage students to comment on the thread posts on your website. It's hard to control and get people post but I think it would be cool.
Other then that, I really wouldn’t change anything about your project. I think it’s great and it’s a very current topic that interests most of the student body. Your website is really clear and easy to see the information. It will be interesting to see the end results of this project. Good luck!
I really enjoyed how you decided to look into the ticket situation here on campus. This is a great topic because so many people can relate. Few students realize that the University of Wisconsin actually compares quite nicely with other Big Ten schools in relation to ticket distribution and ticket prices, and your research has shown this in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteI know first hand of a large amount of students who have had issues with the ticket policy already and many of them don’t understand why the athletic department uses the process that it uses. Having all the breakdowns of the different Big Ten ticket allotments with regard to student tickets sold in relation to enrollment and student tickets sold in relation to size of stadium is very useful to an audience that doesn’t know much about this topic. It is very convenient to have this all located in one spot instead of being forced to search each of the eleven Big Ten school’s websites. The one thing that may be interesting to look into would be why the athletic department chooses to distribute tickets the way they do. Why does the athletic department use a lottery system instead of selling season tickets on a first come first serve basis? Do they not want students waiting in a line for days on end? Do they feel that the students waiting in line will be forced to miss classes? I completely agree with Christine on the idea of maybe get student opinions on the topic. Which ticket distribution method would students prefer? Is the majority of students content with the way the lottery is set up? Do they feel upperclassmen and past season ticket holders deserve student tickets? Or would they prefer to wait in line for a few days? Do they feel this would ensure the most diehard fans would be guaranteed tickets? (I personally think this is the no brainer method to ticket distribution but what do I know?) Finding this sort of information would obviously require a great deal of time and effort setting up meetings and interviewing past and present members of the athletic department, but I would guarantee an audience would be interested in this information.
Your website looks great for its current stage. You have most of your information clearly organized and well defined. I look forward to seeing the final product and the rest of your findings. Job well done!
I think that your project is a great idea, and the way it has evolved as you collected information shows that you are truly dedicated to creating an accurate representation of the UW-Madison ticket sales. Your website looks great as a collection of your research. Also, your presentation gave a very good summary of the research you have done.
ReplyDeleteAs to improvements for your website and project in general, I only have a few suggestions. Firstly, though this may take too much time to do, I think that a summary of your survey data organized by year in school would be nice. For example, your survey question number 3 could potentially show the change in how many upperclassmen were denied tickets. Because freshmen were granted tickets based on a lottery system prior to the changes in football ticket policies, this might be nice to see as a comparison to how this might have changed with the change in the policy.
Another comparison that might be useful would be to show the percentages of each grade level that receive tickets for different Big Ten Schools. Many people that I know are angry with changes in ticket policies because of changes to how they are distributed rather than simply the amount of tickets that are distributed. I really liked how you compared the amount of tickets each University allows for the student section in each sport and I think this is important as to whether or not UW-Madison gives the students enough seats. I’m not sure if it would be possible to find the distribution of tickets for each grade level from different schools, but I think that this would be helpful for comparisons between schools.
Another thing that would be good to address with respect to ticketing at UW-Madison would be the way students are admitted into the stadium during football games. This year showed very different procedures with respect to this which cause some students to miss a full quarter of the game even though they had arrived on time for the game. I had personally arrived 20 minutes early and still missed kickoff. Though this does not reflect ticket pricing or how many seats are granted to students, I would say this is relevant to your “UW-Madison ticketing policies” topic.
Finally, I think that an interview with whoever determines ticketing policies would be good. This might show how different policies that UW-Madison had in the past worked and why these policies were though to be inadequate. Because an interview such as this one would probably be hard to arrange on such short notice, one way to do this might be to look at past articles reporting changes in ticketing policies (which it seems you have done to some extent) and then give a brief summary of what changes UW-Madison has made in the past. It might also be useful to explain why certain policies were abandoned in the past.
Though I feel your project has done a great job of collecting a wide array of information concerning ticketing policies, I feel that these changes would help you to even better your project and usefulness to the public.
While everyone else who responded said it, I would like to reiterate that I think you girls did a great job of not only gathering the information, but making the important points that came from your information. I certainly understand where you are coming from as I am nervous about my standing when I sign up for tickets in my senior year. I remember begging one of my girlfriends for the football season tickets that she got this past year which I didn't receive.
ReplyDeleteI found it quite ironic that you guys did this topic because just yesterday, I found out that the football ticket system has been changed once again. This time, it is going to be on a first come first serve basis. Am I in favor of this? I don't know because I don't know how it will play out. What I do know is that there will of course be people who find this system to be great and people who find this system to be stupid. Those people will most likely decide based on whether or not they get tickets. I hope that you girls, in your final presentation, talk about the new system and how you think it will work at the UW.
I really think that your presentation went well on Thursday. Not only is the idea of the website unique and creative, but I must say I am quite impressed that you were all able to build this website. However, in terms of the website, I must say that I would make a few changes, just to make it easier to get around the site. I understand that it is a rough draft of the website, and maybe my ideas are already in production, but I would just say that the tabs be a little more detailed as to what the page entails. You probably have this idea but I figured I would just throw my two cents in.
I think that the best part of your page is that you all explain who you are, where you come from, etc... It is always important to establish yourselves, establish your ethos, so that the readers and viewers know your point of view and how you came to your thoughts. I also liked the organization of all of your graphs and data so that it is very easy to understand and find. I think it would be cool though if you found some testimonials from people, rather than just statistics. While statistics are nice, and prove a point, testimonials are proof of peoples actual words. It is much more enlightening for a reader to see a persons verbal view rather than there number.
Lastly, I think that you should get some information from the UW athletic department. You should try and talk to one of the department heads and see what it is that goes into the decision making of the executive people. I personally feel that one of the problems that students have with the current system is that we don't know why the methods are changing, we just know that they are changing. I would be very curious to find out why the methods are changing, especially with this new change for the football tickets.
I think you girls have a great project. Im almost jealous I am not doing it. You have picked a topic that is important to just about every kid on this campus and I am very eager to see what you all come up with. I think that if you update the website with the new information, this could be a perfect project.
As a huge sports fan myself i can definitely appreciate your project. I also recently heard that they are actually not doing the lottery anymore for football tickets. I think it's supposed to be a first come first serve thing. But, i really liked the information from your project because it was cool to see just how our system stands up to the rest of the big ten.
ReplyDeleteI was very surprised to see that we actually compare pretty well. For a school with a reputation for having some rowdy fans, the student section isn't very big. The fact that the rest of the schools didn't have much larger sections was interesting. I thought there were at least a few, especially a school like Ohio State, who would have much larger student sections.
I’d be interested to see what you all think about the switch from the raffle to the first come first serve style. Personally, I think it might be even harder to get tickets now, especially because it’s done online. The raffle system, though random and sometimes unfair, seemed to have worked fine until last year. Supposedly the reason they are switching is because an unusual number of underclassmen got tickets last year and the older students complained.
If I had it my way, they would expand the student section. It would probably cause an uproar with alumni, and they might lose some money, but the current students are the ones driving the school into the future, why not add a section to the student area to even further improve our home field advantage. This school is well known for the great support fans give their teams and I think a few more student seats would increase interest in the team even more. Tickets could remain the same price and they could come up with other ways to generate revenue lost from the more expensive non-student tickets.
I guess we will see how effective the new system is. The other thing I’d be interested in would be whether or not they will do the same for basketball tickets. As the harder of the two tickets to get in the raffle, maybe the balance will be more even for basketball with the first come first serve method in place. Either way, it’s nice that your project seemingly coincides with the switch.
Another point I would like to see is how this switch affects decisions of some students on whether or not to come here. Maybe more kids will choose this school as opposed to other rival big ten opponents because they like our system better.
The only thing I would suggest would be an interview. I know some of the other responses suggested the person in charge of the ticket distribution, but I would be more intrigued by what some of the athletes themselves think. Would they like to see more students in the seats? Would they prefer the first come first serve method? All in all, you guys did a great job, and really attacked your topic effectively.