Quote Originally Posted by ScottH View Post
"This is MY seat- is has MY name on it." - For any one season, it is. But I get your point.

"It has caused us a lot of problems and issues that we are now having to deal with" - What problems and issues?

"It was just a very short-sighted poorly thought out program." - Not when originally put in place. It was probably ACCIDENTALLY pretty smart. It has kept Dudy Noble chairbacks sold out for 25+ years. Think of the environment 25 years ago. Not the current one. Few stadiums had Personal Seat Licenses in 1986. Certainly no college baseball stadiums. It definitely should have been structured differently (annual or limited multi year) in retrospect but also looking in the rearview mirror it was pretty successful idea. And now needs an overhaul.

The common frustration I read is vacant premium seats. To me, thats not a Lifetime Chairback problem but primarily a function of the lack of an effective mechanism to move asses into those seats when vacant.

When a new stadium is built and the seating priority is based on BDC points plus an annual seat fee, how does the problem of empty seats in prime chairback areas go away? ( I am not talking about enough chairbacks but the premium ones having folks in them)

The "dugout to dugout" chairbacks will still be occupied by the top BDC point members. A rough guess puts "dugout to dugout" chairbacks in the #1000 rank BDC giving numbers. And those won't be at Dudy Noble at many weekend series just like they aren't now.

Same Problem. We have to have an effective way to get folks into unused seats.

Todd (and maybe a good board survey question) how much should an Annual Personal Seat License fee in the new stadium be on top of any BDC donation you make and a $250 season ticket? $0, $50, $100, $250, $500? $750 $1000 Let's assume the seat is First base Mid-dugout 20 rows up.
How do USCe, LSU, Arkansas, even Ole Miss to some extent manage to do it?

Fact is -- the "new" stadium doesn't need to be and should not be seated on straight up priority points. They need to have a proprietary algorithm that takes into account BDC priority, but also gives x amount of "points" to people that have kept their lifetime seats all these years, gives x amount of "points" to people actually showing up to > x% of games, etc.

Seat our new club area on BDC priority and offer the extra skyboxes to those with highest priority that do not currently have them. That (should) take care of 1300-1500 of the highest ranking tickets as well...

From there, you "mark" the seats of the people that show up all the time -- and make the grandstand full general admission during the midweek and early season non-conference(non premiere) weekend games with the understanding that you move if a ticket holder shows up -- and you don't sit in the marked seats.

WE can and will fill a new baseball stadium up regularly if we handle seating it correctly. We did for YEARS and YEARS before. Our fanbase hasn't gotten any smaller or further away from Starkville. And the ease of transit has gotten MUCH easier with the advancements of cars and the full 4-laning of 25. The point being --- build it, the people will come.