BerkeleyBear;842371926 said:
I think there may be a misunderstanding by some on how the process of ticket allocation for a third party venue works.
Once negotiations had concluded Cal's allocation was what it was and that was not going to change. The 49ers would sell their ticket to whomever they could, either their season ticket holders or the general public. None of the 49ers seats that their season ticket holders didn't purchase were going to be later allocated to Cal.
Again, what people who are unhappy with the seats for the Cal-Oregon game are effectively arguing is that Cal, based on the ticket allocation that Cal was able to negotiate, should not have agreed to play the game at Levi's Stadium, and that the game should have been played at Memorial. That is a legitimate position to advocate.
What is unrealistic to think is that at some point given that the game was going to be played at Levi's Stadium that Cal should or could be able to provide unsold 49er reserved tickets to Cal ESP ticket holders. That simply could not and would not happen. I know it's one of those things that in concept appears to be very simple, but in reality, given the required logistics and negotiations simply will not happen.
I don't think that emailing Sandy at PSU will have much effect at this point. However, one can certainly register one's displeasure to the current Cal AD so that this type of problem will be unlikely to happen again in the future.
I think we are 90% in agreement on this issue - you are likely right on the mechanics of most 3rd party ticket deals, but I would say that if say an Ohio State or a Michigan type team wanted to do a similar arrangement, I bet they could negotiate a better deal in terms of what tickets they receive and if they made a return of unsold tickets a condition on playing the game, the NFL team would bow down and give them what they wanted. Of course, we are not of that stature.
In the end, the issue of returning unsold tickets to Cal or selling them to the general public is a red herring because contrary to what was posted here earlier (myself included), 49ers SBL holders do not have the right to their exact seats. There would not have to be seats scattered across the club level to accommodate the SBL's claiming their own seat, the 49ers could offer them seats in a more contained way. The club levels at Levis run on both sides and comprise 9000 seats, so allocating one entire sideline for Cal and one for 49ers season ticket holders would not be too hard, and it's obvious FAR FAR less than 50% of Niners ticket holders bought seats.
Another case is the pac 12 championship. The 49ers season ticket holders were given a 4 day presale window, the same days as donors to P12 schools back in may. I again feel that the yield was low, and also that unused seats club seats are making their way to the P12 offices to distribute as they see fit AFTER the sale, likely to sponsors and some for each schools mega donors.
We both agree that it likely came down to money, but I don't see it being as that much in the end that it would make the game unplayable. What I do think could have happened is that both Sandy and the 49ers completely overestimated demand for the game. Since Cal gets a cut of revenue, it's easy to see how the AD got blinded by $$ signs. I do wonder if the 49ers fed her some bogus inflated $$$ numbers - they make money off of the event whether 40k or 70k sell... because that stadium would be empty that night. Cal has obviously an alternate and
free location where they don't have to split revenue, so we are far more sensitive to # of tickets sold. Niners are in this for profit sure... but they hold high school games there which shows their threshold for what kind of even is worth holding is far far less than a CFB game.
Emailing Sandy at PSU was an obvious joke I thought. Mostly to point out she was responsible and is now gone. I would think that if we play again at Levis in the future (we still have weeknight games...2 every 3 years), that both the 49ers and Cal can negotiate for a better lot of seats on the 50 - using this game as a metric and seeing that those 50 yard line seats were just not snatched up by niners season ticket holders, giving Cal with some big time leverage to get those seats at a greatly reduced price (again we are buying 2500 club seats at whatever price no matter what, this just leaves the 49ers with slight worse locations to sell their excess club seats at $250 a pop. The 9ers (and Cal through rev sharing) still get $250 a pop for every one sold, but it's just a question of do less ticekts sell due to their slightly less desirable location.
I wonder if playing at the Coli or ATT again would have similar issues? ATT has almost NO comparable seats since the 1st deck sucks for football. But donors might be less pissed off if they are told a weeknight game at ATT was chosen for convenience and not to score 'up to a seven figure payout'. The Coli and ATT are hard to book in September due to baseball, and even harder in October since the post season occurs and they have to be available for set days.
