Well... like the US election cycles... a full reseating year is once again upon us.
Curious to hear from our local east-standers in terms of what they plan on doing with the new (larger) student section. Will that impact your east vs west selection?
Also, what date is everyone getting? I was quite surprised that ticket selection opens on April 9 and my date is May 15. When looking at the Hokie Point system online, I'm in he top 10-15%. One month to get through ~10% seems like a long time!
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Also May 15th. Not excited that my women's BB tickets jumped from 90 to 160 each.
$70 jump stinks for sure but hopefully that extra money will help us retain our next coach... price of doing business these days I guess?
May 30th at about the 22% level
We still haven't gotten our time email just the email to warn us to be looking for it. Which is weird I thought reseating date and times all went out same day. We are top 5000 so based on what yall are getting I will pick end of May beginning of June.
Check your spam folder.
May 16th for our 4 tickets. And I would guess we are in that 10-15% range as well.
April 16th 9 am (top 1%). I asked why so late when usually selection was 2-3 days later. I was told there's no seat selections on Friday.
Wasn't aware of the no Friday rule. Leg for you!
God damn I'm June 3rd around 2.
4/9. Is that good?
High score!
481 fewer Hokie Club members this year. No wonder we can't get capital projects off the ground, struggle in the NIL space and are behind pears in salaries for staff.
I just gave $25,000 so i'm done for this year
Edit: tuition and R&B count, right?
NIL is why the membership is down. The message is if you give $100 give to NIL. The new law (which should be passed next week) should help. You can get "credit" for NIL donations.
I find that difficult to believe. In just new grads more than 481 people are coming out of Tech. We should see at least a few people increase every year in Hokie club membership even with people rolling money over to 2 NIL groups.
We can't fill the stands in the second half and yet you expect a 22 year old to be donating to the Hokie Club...
This isn't a VT thing; this is an everywhere thing. College kids these days only stick around if the game is close. Every school is experiencing it.
And that's my point. I don't expect young recent grads to pony up $$$ for any athletic department. Anywhere.
I expect 100 grads to pony up 50 bucks yes.
Best of luck w that. Deep in debt and little interest in sports, this isn't gonna happen at VT.
100/year? That's quite unrealistic.
100 grads that's 1.4% of spring graduation. If we can't even get that then it really does seem like time to accept we are long term outside the P2 and accept our fate.
Being in or out of the P2 is not directly tied to that. Many have a similar issue w young grads. They are in the P2 because of previous alignment. If you think straight donations are how you get in there, we have not, are not, and will not be there. This isn't breaking news.
I dunno - Of all my friends I still keep in touch with from VT, I think I'm the only one who gives to their alma mater. Even the people who live within driving distance of VT; they all know someone who has tickets, so there's not much incentive for them to donated. I have close friends who are grads at Tennessee, Penn State, Florida, and Clemson. I'm pretty sure none of them give to their athletic departments.
As I learn more, I don't think it makes sense to donate to HC if you're not (a) able and willing at least 4 figures annually or (b) unable to take advantage of the benefits (eg; tickets). A few hundred doesn't make much of difference in a capital project or a coach's salary. A few hundred goes further at Triumph.
I'm curious to know if there's any P5 university that successfully lands a large quantity of small donors. Everyone points to Clemson, but as I learn more about IPTAY from people who went there, it sounds more like a way to build awareness than actually make money.
Awareness is the biggest thing you want. For multiple reasons one small donors are who become big donors long term. It's more likely someone who starts out giving the minimum will one day give new thr top end Han someone just step straight into that top end. Engagement, a small time donor who gets information on ticket sales, events, auctions, special one time donor requests etc will be more likely to attend events or buy tickets to away games or neutral site games or do those one time donations. Third it leads to "family engagement" even if your a small time donor your getting mailers and other communication, your more likely to attend an event even if it's few and far between but your kids will be more likely to be engaged, which leads to long term engagement potential for future fans.
I don't disagree about your point on awareness or generational involvement. I just don't see the value prop for a 22 year old to start giving to VT, unless you're able to make it to every game.
Going back to this statement:
I wonder how many kids graduating from P2 schools are entering donor clubs right after graduation? Annecdotally, I doubt these other universities are getting $25 from 100 students each year, but maybe I'm wrong.
So, I was one of those people 3-5 years ago who was complaining about Hokie Club not doing enough outreach. 3-5 years later, I'm gettting all these emails, magazines, etc, and I read none of it. I get all my VT info from TKP, TSL pod, or twitter. There was one event that I thought was really cool, and that was when Coach Fuente came and spoke to us in Atlanta in 2017 or 18. They haven't done anything like that since.
Grads are being saddled with generational student debt while they see their athlete peers get cash payments and endorsements on top of their free education and you're wondering why the grads aren't donating?
Lol
Presumably, that's happening at all the other universities, too.
Or is it that some universities have engineering programs and are better at teaching math?
Grads saddle themselves with generational debt. There is 0 reason to take out any loan except for tuition. So many people I went to school with took out extra for rent, books, living expenses. I don't have any sympathy for those people. It's called get a job.
To be fair, a lot of people are getting bad advice.
And it's not like the Federal government is really helping them. They're helping the universities.
Are we struggling in the NIL space?
According to every podcast with a beat reporter we are in sports not named football and in football even then didn't have a good grasp of what the going rate for positions of need was in P5.
I think its pretty difficult to have any concrete evaluation on how VT (or most other schools) are doing in the NIL space, other than retrospectively.
Its an unregulated open market with zero accounting or accountability. On one end, you have Jaden Rashada claiming that he was offered $10+ million by UF and then they reneged on it. Then you have Kadyn Proctor, transferring to Iowa for 2 weeks, taking reportedly $100k in NIL and bolting.
From a VT perspective, after FB season, I think we all assumed we were doing quite well based on the player retention and aquisiton. But now after Basketball season, it seems quite clear that the picture isn't so rosy.
Combine that with the Hokie Club decrease that was noted above and the Cassell Renovation that appears to be DOA, it certainly doesn't seem like VT Athletics is very healthy financially.
That's the wonderful thing about this whole scenario...its obvious that we are behind places like Ohio St, Auburn, ect., but its nearly impossible to tell how we are doing against our peers. So when you get asked to donate to NIL, you don't know if that donation is worthwhile or just getting thrown into a black hole.
I'm not convinced that Basketball is an NIL issue. It may be one of multiple factors, but I feel like guys have concerns about their development.
Until less than 6 months ago, OSU was really, really behind on NIL, and Alabama wasn't in a great place either. Seems like they've both gotten it squared away though.
This is true... the market is wild.
And one thing the market definitely hates is uncertainty.
How goes reseating?
Sounds like the majority are worse seats for double the money; which means the better seats are receiving premium dollar+donations. While the complaints are understandable and warranted, someone is dishing out a lot of money for those 'sought after' seats. Maybe we won't be so far behind after this year
Yeah, but I have been supporting and attending WBB games for years, new fair weather fans have kicked me out of the seats I have been in since the last resorting. That isn't right either.
must be big donor fans moving to the head of the line.
Yep, probably football and MBB fans now interested in WBB. Let's be honest we signed up for tickets when we had Brooks, Georgia, Strack and a top rated new recruits coming in. I still went from section 6 row E to a different section and row L.
Reading that reminded me of this lol...
Mine were about the same 3-4 rows back (but same section). I did get pimp parking upgrade (prime space in Lot 1).
I think VT is just joining the big leagues. The fanbase is torn between wanting to play with the big boys, but have it like a small college. I grew up in Ohio, this is how it's always been at OH State, the massive donors get the good seats when they want and the average donor gets what they can. It's just been like that for decades so the expectation is well ingrained. Tech fans remember different and the change is rough. We have all seen the revenue numbers. Hoping for a mega donor to bail out the program while the other 50k get cheap tickets is not reality.
I can't like this enough. You cannot complain about the athletic department's lack of funding and your seat getting reassigned because someone was willing to pay more than you were for it in the same breath. There is no customer loyalty in any business anymore and make no mistake college sports are a business now. It does not matter how long you've had those seats. This isn't 1980.
I understand, but it doesn't make me happy. Especially as I was supporting a program (WBB) through its down years and ups. Now I am losing priority to fans just because they can donate more than me even though I was supporting that program longer.
This is a fair response and I would probably have a similar reaction if I were a season ticket holder getting moved to worse seats. There's just been a lot of noise about how there's no money in the athletic department and the ticket reseating seems like a great way for the athletic department to generate more money through forced donations. It does suck for the individual, but for the masses it seems like a reasonable strategy for the school.
Disagree. Out tickets are priced like teams that actually win championships and are 3x what programs like Maryland and ASU charge as we have been over this. Our football tickets are 100% overpriced for the product. This will be proven true when Whit starts offering steeply discounted "3 game packs" etc.
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I don't think we are aspiring to be ASU or Maryland.
We would do a lot of nasty things to get to Maryland's TV revenue level for 1. And I get that we are aiming higher than ASU, however they take football seriously- it's not an afterthought and they have dominated Arizona the past decade- which is really our only calling card as well. The programs aren't much different- except our season tickets being much, much, much more expensive. Like I said, the number of "3 packs" offered by Whit this summer will tell you where the market truly is.
ASU, a school of 75k students, sold out their 53.5k stadium twice last year.
Tech, a school of 35k students, sold out their 65.5k stadium five times last year.
We're a much bigger draw and our pricing reflects that.
Roughly 55K of those ASU students are online. A significantly higher portion than VT- whose on campus numbers you cited. We also all know that there were empty seats in lane for every game.
No man, 79k on campus, 145k including online. This according to ASU's own website.
Regarding empty seats... ASU didn't have any?
Everything I see is nowhere near 79K in Tempe? whatever.. Their tickets are a fraction of ours- a fraction. And their claim to fame the past 15 years is the same as ours- "we beat our rival a lot"...
From ASU's website- recent tempe enrollment - their campus akin to VT's blacksburg campus - apples/apples
Tempe 57,144 57,588 54,866 52,386 53,494
Seriously, if we want to be a big dawg, maybe we need to be prepared to pay like the big dawgs.
Bargains never last forever.
Over 5K for donation and season tix... vs. 400 bucks. I think we are big dog enough until we get a better product, don't you think?
Like everything else, it's pay to play.
I do pay. So do ASU fans... they also won't win their conference or go to the CFB playoffs this year- but they "pay to play" the same way we do right now. They just pay pennies on the dollar by comparison. Aspirations you say? VT football aspires to win the ACC right? Well would ASU need to charge 10X what they do for season tix to be in the mix in the Big 12? I highly doubt it.
Annoyingly, this analogy would probably work better if you asked whether ASU needed to charge 10X to win the ACC. And my answer to that would be no. Don't be surprised if smu comes in and finishes in the top half of the league in year 1. To win the ACC you really just need to get through two teams- both of which are currently just shells of their former selves. The ACC isn't hard to win, in part, because over half the league doesn't take football seriously.
Agree with you 100% on SMU.. they are going to be a pain in the neck for us in football and basketball- and oh by the way, they have unlimited money.
Can confirm. I live about a mile from the SMU campus. There is a reason we call it Southern Millionaires University here.
Apologies, I see that ASU on-campus number above is multiple locations. Tempe campus itself is 57k which, again, is much larger than Tech's (and bigger than ASU's stadium itself, but that's another subject). I find it disingenuous to compare them as apples to apples whatsoever.
Joe made a comment at some point during the Fuente replacement era, where he compared VT to a really successful small business that is trying to grow without losing their charm. Seems similar to what you're saying.