Penn State Football: TicketCity Bowl Ticket Sales Struggling

Penn State will be playing in a half-empty stadium Jan. 2 in Dallas.

Probably less than half.

And the TicketCity Bowl knows it.

“I think if we get mid-40s, we’d be happy,” said Monty Clegg, ticket manager for the 2-year-old bowl. “That’ll be tough. If you want to know the truth.”

A struggling economy, a no-name bowl and the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal can all be considered factors for the decline in interest.

Per usual, the announced attendance of the Jan. 2 bowl between Penn State and Houston will be the total number of tickets purchased. Including purchases through the bowl ticket office, the allotment made to each school and its band, the allotment made to the bowl sponsors and the allotment made to the Conference USA office, about 45,000 tickets are swallowed up, Clegg said.

That in itself makes up about half of the 92,000-capacity Cotton Bowl Stadium. The reality, though, is the actual number of bodies in seats will be lower.

Penn State expects about 4,000 of its allotment of 6,000 tickets to be purchased, said Bud Meredith, Penn State’s director of ticketing operations.

Houston, through a deal with Conference USA gets 10,000 allotted tickets, Clegg said. Calls placed to Houston were not returned, but Houston selling out can be considered a stretch.

Conference USA and TicketCity purchased a combined 6,000 tickets to dole out to their employees, but who knows how many of those will go unused?

Add in Clegg’s estimated walk-up sales of 1,000 or so, which is mainly dependent on weather, and Penn State can expect less than 40,000 actual fans filing through turnstiles Jan. 2. To put that in perspective, it’d be equivalent to 44,000 people sitting in the 107,000-seat Beaver Stadium, or, two student sections.

“Realistically, we’re gonna have to have a few good days and some good walk-up,” Clegg said.

Kay Rogers, owner and manager of Centre For Travel in State College, said a little more than 100 travel packages have been sold as of Wednesday. Typical Florida bowls garner about 300-500 travel package purchases. The 1995 Rose Bowl garnered 5,000 sales.

“Are we disappointed?” Rogers said. “Probably.”

Rogers calculated the costing for the Insight, Gator and Meineke Car Care of Texas bowls as possible destinations for bowl season. Penn State, of course, fell down to the TicketCity Bowl, behind teams they defeated during the season such as Iowa, Ohio State and Northwestern. The Sandusky scandal and all the negative publicity that comes with it no doubt played a role in bowl committees balking at the Nittany Lions.

“I’m sure that had something to do with it,” Rogers said. “The players are not at fault, but people still have that impression.”

Meredith said he hasn’t heard of one complaint from anyone about the scandal. Talking with officials from West Virginia and other schools, bowl ticket sales are down across the board because of the economy, he said.

Then there’s the matter of the TicketCity Bowl being in its infancy. Clegg said the bowl is still trying to build its brand and establish itself as a name bowl, something inviting a team like Penn State can help with.

“I don’t wanna downgrade our bowl,” Clegg said. “In the pecking order of bowls, we’re not a household bowl.”

Said Rogers, who’s in her fifth decade of employment at Centre For Travel: “I never even heard of the TicketCity Bowl. We never played in a bowl that people didn’t know the name.”

Clegg said his office has sold about 23,000 tickets so far, which includes any sales on StubHub and other online ticket vendors. He said one of bowl CEO Tom Starr’s founding goals for the game was to have it played at the Cotton Bowl, which is hardly ever used now that the Cotton Bowl game is played at Cowboys Stadium.

When asked if the TicketCity Bowl may need to consider moving to a smaller stadium, Clegg said there have been no formal discussions of doing so but would consider it if it made sense.

Last year’s attendance for the first-ever TicketCity Bowl between Northwestern and Texas Tech was 42,000, Clegg said. He hoped a marquee matchup between a name-brand institution and a 12-1 team with a Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback would increase those numbers, but that doesn’t appear it will happen at the rate he envisioned at the onset of bowl announcements, when the goal was 50,000 paid attendance.

Through Penn State, tickets cost $75. As of Thursday, however, fans could buy tickets on StubHub for as low as $20. Meredith said Penn State will essentially cut off sales on Dec. 30, the Friday before the game.

Clegg has a different deadline, one much more telling of the interest in the game.

“I’ll keep selling up until the third quarter,” Clegg said.

Related coverage

• StateCollege.com’s Penn State football page