I know of three folks that ended up with worse seats at Levi's for the Oregon game than they have at CMS. One has ESP tickets on the 35 yard line, and at midfield. The second also has ESP tickets at near midfield. The third person, a longtime donor, has benchback tickets at about the 20 yard line.

Both the ESP persons, ended up with tickets at Levi's on the 20 yard line (Section C213 and C141). The third person with benchbacks is on the 10 yard line. And today I see a 4th person, who has ESP seats, that was put down LOW on the 20 yard line in row 7, the very same section and row as one of the other ESP persons.

Why could this be? Apparently the ATO values the general public more than the ESP donors for this "home" game. We get tickets on the 20 yard line, and the general public (and Oregon fans!) can buy Club tickets closer to mid-field. See the huge amount of tickets still available on light blue and medium blue sections here:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/university-of-california-football-vs-university-santa-clara-california-10-24-2014/event/1C004C7FE7B9B363?artistid=880865&majorcatid=10004&minorcatid=8

I imagine there will be some pretty unhappy ESP participants. Further proof, assuming any was needed, that moving this game was about money, not about the difficulties of hosting a weekday game on campus. After all, the extra money ("as much as one million dollars") has to come from somewhere, right?

Figure it would be all screwed up somehow, going to wait til the last second to buy on open market. No way that place is filled.

Born and raised in Santa Clara and living not far away, I did not buy tickets to this game, as I don't like the idea of a home game outside CMS.

In retrospect, giving away our home game this year against the Duck is just wrong. Depending on how we do against Wazzou, I don't think Oregon would have been invincible this year in the confines of Memorial, especially considering our offense.

Toxic, foul residue from the former AD.

Cal Geek;842370350 said:

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Why could this be?

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$

Tedhead94;842370425 said:

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$

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4 the love of money

Tedhead94;842370425 said:

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$

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going4roses;842370432 said:

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4 the love of money

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It really isn't a lot of money. Tickets are barely more money at the 50 yard line than they are at the 20.

Sent email to ATO, and they called back right away.
49er season ticket holders get first right to buy tickets, so they held back a lot of tickets, and allocated less desirable tickets for Cal fans. And then released tickets that 49er season ticket holders did not want to the general public.

Even after a second call, I still do not understand why they did not first let 49er season ticket holders purchase what they wanted , then allocate to Cal fans. But they did not do it this way, the way it was done, the general public (and Oregon fans!) get better tickets than the ESP donors, and other Cal season ticket holders.

^ lol that suuuuucks.

seems to me the esp season ticket holders should be in premium seats... no ? how did something cut and dry get so messy

are niner/ not CAL fans getting tickets and selling them to duck fans ?

FWIW, my tix are almost exactly what my CMS seats are--35-40 yd line. I'm in Row 2 of 2nd deck.

UrsaMajor;842370577 said:

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FWIW, my tix are almost exactly what my CMS seats are--35-40 yd line. I'm in Row 2 of 2nd deck.

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Just curious, what Club at CMS, Field, Stadium? And what section are you in at Levi's?

I know someone who had Field Club A, near midfield, and he is on the 20 yard line at Levi's C141, down low in row 7.

Cal Geek;842370350 said:

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Why could this be? Apparently the ATO values the general public more than the ESP donors for this "home" game. We get tickets on the 20 yard line, and the general public (and Oregon fans!) can buy Club tickets closer to mid-field. See the huge amount of tickets still available on light blue and medium blue sections here:

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I'm not sure the AD/ATO did any of this 'intentionally'. What I mean is that Sandy basically just negotiated a bad deal with the 49ers for whatever reason. Likely a lot of indifference towards fans and general incompetence involved. Par for the course if you ask me. As you said below, 49ers rights holders have right of first refusal. There are 9000 club seats at that stadium though. And 2500 ESP seat holders. There are far more club seats on the 50, 40, etc than at CMS. It really should not be that hard to seat ESP donors all in nice places. Maybe not the exact same location, but someone should have an idea regarding what is comparable. The 49ers are also in this to make money, so it appears they just withheld the best club seats for themselves. Look at sections C215-219. Lots of seats for sale.

And not to throw more fuel on the fire, but I hated the short sided statement that Cal would make up to $1 million off of this game. Great (and don't forget the 'up to' part). ESP donors are putting up about $14 million per year currently... to play games on campus. That means you as a group are paying $2-2.5 million per home game, to A) sit in a club at CMS w/ benefits as promised, and B) allow all other Cal alum, fans, opponents fans, etc to enjoy a game in Berkeley. I've always thought the amount of extra money promised by the 49ers is not enough justify basically stealing a home game that donors have graciously donated for.

Now, on the other hand, we should all be realists - so if the weekday home game is basically untenable, and this has to happen, but don't claim it's making money when it's not. And drive a harder bargain with the 49ers to get better club seats, and even give money back to get them if that's what it takes.

All that said, I think the Levis game will still be fun. Hmm.

:headbang

Cal Geek;842370350 said:

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I know of three folks that ended up with worse seats at Levi's for the Oregon game than they have at CMS. One has ESP tickets on the 35 yard line, and at midfield. The second also has ESP tickets at near midfield. The third person, a longtime donor, has benchback tickets at about the 20 yard line.

Both the ESP persons, ended up with tickets at Levi's on the 20 yard line (Section C213 and C141). The third person with benchbacks is on the 10 yard line. And today I see a 4th person, who has ESP seats, that was put down LOW on the 20 yard line in row 7, the very same section and row as one of the other ESP persons.

Why could this be? Apparently the ATO values the general public more than the ESP donors for this "home" game. We get tickets on the 20 yard line, and the general public (and Oregon fans!) can buy Club tickets closer to mid-field. See the huge amount of tickets still available on light blue and medium blue sections here:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/university-of-california-football-vs-university-santa-clara-california-10-24-2014/event/1C004C7FE7B9B363?artistid=880865&majorcatid=10004&minorcatid=8

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Thank you, Sandy.
The gift that just keeps giving.
A "home" game 50 miles from home.
Cal fans will be outnumbered by Oregon fans.
Students won't be attending in any great numbers (good for the rooting section, right? :sarc
We have to pay extra for this home game.
We have to pay extra for the parking for this home game.
Assuming that we can even find a parking spot.
The seats we get for the "home" game are worse than our usual "home" game seats.
We have to drive into the worst Bay Area traffic, in the worst direction and at the worst time of the day on the worst day of the week.
I will assume all the amenities will cost more than at Memorial.

But we are told not to worry, we are lucky that we can visit a brand new stadium up close.
(even though i thougt Cal has an almost new stadium in its own backyard).
:headbang:rant

i have to agree, i didn't feel strongly either way, but now that it's coming closer, the stupider it looks, oregon at memorial this year would be fantastic

ColoradoBear1;842370619 said:

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I'm not sure the AD/ATO did any of this 'intentionally'. What I mean is that Sandy basically just negotiated a bad deal with the 49ers for whatever reason. Likely a lot of indifference towards fans and general incompetence involved. Par for the course if you ask me. As you said below, 49ers rights holders have right of first refusal. There are 9000 club seats at that stadium though. And 2500 ESP seat holders. There are far more club seats on the 50, 40, etc than at CMS. It really should not be that hard to seat ESP donors all in nice places. Maybe not the exact same location, but someone should have an idea regarding what is comparable. The 49ers are also in this to make money, so it appears they just withheld the best club seats for themselves. Look at sections C215-219. Lots of seats for sale.

And not to throw more fuel on the fire, but I hated the short sided statement that Cal would make up to $1 million off of this game. Great (and don't forget the 'up to' part). ESP donors are putting up about $14 million per year currently... to play games on campus. That means you as a group are paying $2-2.5 million per home game, to A) sit in a club at CMS w/ benefits as promised, and B) allow all other Cal alum, fans, opponents fans, etc to enjoy a game in Berkeley. I've always thought the amount of extra money promised by the 49ers is not enough justify basically stealing a home game that donors have graciously donated for.

Now, on the other hand, we should all be realists - so if the weekday home game is basically untenable, and this has to happen, but don't claim it's making money when it's not. And drive a harder bargain with the 49ers to get better club seats, and even give money back to get them if that's what it takes.

All that said, I think the Levis game will still be fun. Hmm.

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Sorry but Sandy did negotiate the deal intentionally. She might not have meant to harm the fans intentionally; but she did not give the fans and their concerns much thought. So at a minimum she showed "reckless disregard" of the wishes of the Cal Fans. She saw the $$$ and said, give me the money. If the Cal fans don't like it they can lump it. Bah they will show up any way. Some might even think it is fun.

86Oski;842370357 said:

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I imagine there will be some pretty unhappy ESP participants. Further proof, assuming any was needed, that moving this game was about money, not about the difficulties of hosting a weekday game on campus. After all, the extra money ("as much as one million dollars") has to come from somewhere, right?

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Come on now. Did any of us really believe that the game was moved because of the difficulty of hosting the game on campus.
If so, please let me know your name, i have some great sure-fire investments i would like to offer to you.

Even an average salesman/attorney/broker can always come up with some credible or barely credible reason or excuse for doing something. What galls me is that Sandy thought we were stupid enough to believe that stuff.
Like the song says: "One of us is a fool, and she thinks it's me."

68great;842370629 said:

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Thank you, Sandy.
The gift that just keeps giving.
A "home" game 50 miles from home.
Cal fans will be outnumbered by Oregon fans.
Students won't be attending in any great numbers (good for the rooting section, right? :sarc
We have to pay extra for this home game.
We have to pay extra for the parking for this home game.
Assuming that we can even find a parking spot.
The seats we get for the "home" game are worse than our usual "home" game seats.
We have to drive into the worst Bay Area traffic, in the worst direction and at the worst time of the day on the worst day of the week.
I will assume all the amenities will cost more than at Memorial.

But we are told not to worry, we are lucky that we can visit a brand new stadium up close.
(even though i thougt Cal has an almost new stadium in its own backyard).

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Oh, I keep forgetting the "best" talking point from the ATO. It's been used two or three times on me. Something like this:
"We are excited to give the team the opportunity to play in a venue that will be used in a Super Bowl."

You can add me to the list of unhappy ESP seat holders. My ESP seats in Memorial are on the 45 yard line, row 22. The tickets I received for the Oregon game at Levi's Stadiuim are in section C141, row 18; it looks like those seats are on the 20 yard line. No information was sent about access to any of the clubs at the stadium.

Cal Geek;842370643 said:

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Oh, I keep forgetting the "best" talking point from the ATO. It's been used two or three times on me. Something like this:
"We are excited to give the team the opportunity to play in a venue that will be used in a Super Bowl."

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Big deal. We play in a former Super Bowl venue at least once a year (Rose Bowl, LA Coliseum).

Cal Geek;842370474 said:

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49er season ticket holders get first right to buy tickets, so they held back a lot of tickets, and allocated less desirable tickets for Cal fans. And then released tickets that 49er season ticket holders did not want to the general public.

Even after a second call, I still do not understand why they did not first let 49er season ticket holders purchase what they wanted , then allocate to Cal fans. But they did not do it this way, the way it was done, the general public (and Oregon fans!) get better tickets than the ESP donors, and other Cal season ticket holders.

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Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that 49er fans give a damn about the Cal-Oregon game? That's a pretty lame excuse for screwing the most loyal Cal football fans.

Golden One;842370659 said:

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Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that 49er fans give a damn about the Cal-Oregon game? That's a pretty lame excuse for screwing the most loyal Cal football fans.

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Especially at $262 per ticket, which is the price of those available club level seats.

Golden One;842370659 said:

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Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that 49er fans give a damn about the Cal-Oregon game? That's a pretty lame excuse for screwing the most loyal Cal football fans.

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Well 49ers ticket holders are supposed to have the right to buy other events at Levis and a lot of them paid $40-80k for a seat license. Of course this game was announced almost a year ago, so there was plenty of time to give them a chance and still allocate the unused seats. And yes blaming the 49ers season ticket holders seems like a deflection method by Cal.

And don't forget about that 2 hour traffic jam we'll all be in getting out of the parking lots.

Golden One;842370659 said:

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Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that 49er fans give a damn about the Cal-Oregon game? That's a pretty lame excuse for screwing the most loyal Cal football fans.

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I can't even convince the 49er fans I know to come to Cal games with free tickets. Most NFL fans I know have very little interest in College games.

Stadium; I'm in C238

Davidson;842370359 said:

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Figure it would be all screwed up somehow, going to wait til the last second to buy on open market. No way that place is filled.

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I wasn't planning on going, but maybe I'll do that too. End zone seats are going for $150 each right now. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

ColoradoBear1;842370619 said:

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I'm not sure the AD/ATO did any of this 'intentionally'. What I mean is that Sandy basically just negotiated a bad deal with the 49ers for whatever reason. Likely a lot of indifference towards fans and general incompetence involved. Par for the course if you ask me. As you said below, 49ers rights holders have right of first refusal. There are 9000 club seats at that stadium though. And 2500 ESP seat holders. There are far more club seats on the 50, 40, etc than at CMS. It really should not be that hard to seat ESP donors all in nice places. Maybe not the exact same location, but someone should have an idea regarding what is comparable. The 49ers are also in this to make money, so it appears they just withheld the best club seats for themselves. Look at sections C215-219. Lots of seats for sale.

And not to throw more fuel on the fire, but I hated the short sided statement that Cal would make up to $1 million off of this game. Great (and don't forget the 'up to' part). ESP donors are putting up about $14 million per year currently... to play games on campus. That means you as a group are paying $2-2.5 million per home game, to A) sit in a club at CMS w/ benefits as promised, and B) allow all other Cal alum, fans, opponents fans, etc to enjoy a game in Berkeley. I've always thought the amount of extra money promised by the 49ers is not enough justify basically stealing a home game that donors have graciously donated for.

Now, on the other hand, we should all be realists - so if the weekday home game is basically untenable, and this has to happen, but don't claim it's making money when it's not. And drive a harder bargain with the 49ers to get better club seats, and even give money back to get them if that's what it takes.

All that said, I think the Levis game will still be fun. Hmm.

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Most salient point: Likely a lot of indifference towards fans and general incompetence involved.

Have we ever experienced anything different?

Check levi's stadium seat map, it has the club assignment for each section.

I also got worse seats than what I have in Memorial and they put me in the back of the end zone when I'm on the 15/20 in Memorial. I'm not ESP, but a decent donor level and have had tickets for over 20 years and this is how they treat us? I sent a pissed off email and am awaiting response. This is garbage.

Kabam!, er Go Bears!

Hey, if we come into this game with only 1 or 2 losses Cal fans will show up should be fun either way.

ColoradoBear1;842370619 said:

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I'm not sure the AD/ATO did any of this 'intentionally'. What I mean is that Sandy basically just negotiated a bad deal with the 49ers for whatever reason. Likely a lot of indifference towards fans and general incompetence involved. Par for the course if you ask me. As you said below, 49ers rights holders have right of first refusal. There are 9000 club seats at that stadium though. And 2500 ESP seat holders. There are far more club seats on the 50, 40, etc than at CMS. It really should not be that hard to seat ESP donors all in nice places. Maybe not the exact same location, but someone should have an idea regarding what is comparable. The 49ers are also in this to make money, so it appears they just withheld the best club seats for themselves. Look at sections C215-219. Lots of seats for sale.

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It is my understanding is that the 49ers control the all of the seating at Levi's Stadium and they reserved the premium tickets for the Cal-Oregon game for their season ticket holders to purchase, and after those tickets were reserved the 49ers allocated certain blocks of the remaining tickets to Cal.

Given the blocks of seats that Cal was allocated by the 49ers, Cal attempted to assign those seats to Cal season ticket holders so that the Cal season ticket holders would have seats that would provide a similar experience to the seats that they have in California Memorial Stadium, which, of course, is not going to be a perfect or ideal one to one match in many or most cases.

The unsold seats that were reserved for the 49er season ticket holders were then put on sale by the 49ers to the general public. Those unsold seats were not offered by the 49ers to Cal.

Essentially, the 49ers did not allocate enough good seats to Cal to accommodate all of Cal's season ticket holders properly. The 49ers kept most of the best seats for themselves. One can argue that Cal did not negotiate a good enough deal with the 49ers, and that may be the case, but I'm not sure that Cal was in a position to negotiate a much better deal.

All I can say after reading this is thank God they didn't get control of the Big Game....yet.

Grumble, grumble...What if this was our "bowl" game? Would you still complain or be psyched to go?

First, I have had the experience of getting totally screwed by the ATO when I took the family to bowl games. But, my Cal- Oregon ticket assignment is basically the same (20 yard line, row 37, first level). My seat holders and I are excited to go, despite the traffic and parking issues. I agree that we would have a better chance at Memorial, but I am looking forward to seeing the team in a new venue. let's face it. This may be our "bowl" game.

Where are they putting the band and the students? And each seat has a "club" assignment? Holy Toledo!