Meet and Greet with Coach Paulsen

[DreSmithFan]

Please join Chris Durlak, Steven Dunn, Patrick Rooney, Tony & Mary DiBenedetto, and Dustin & Katie Gunderson for a special reception with George Mason Head Basketball Coach Dave Paulsen on Wednesday October 5th from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. at Purple Strategies (815 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, VA 22314). Also joining us is Brad Edwards, George Mason Athletic Director and former Redskins Safety and runner up MVP of Super Bowl XXVI.

Food and beverages will be provided.

We’re asking for a $25 per person contribution to the GMU Foundation. Your contribution is completely tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by the law.

Please RSVP to chris.durlak@purplestrategies.com and then use the following link to donate to the GMU Foundation http://bit.ly/2crdmmp. Please be sure to select "Friend’s of Men’s Basketball" when making your contribution.

This event is going to be a lot of fun and we really hope you can join us!

 

[gmu05]

Amazing we have fans willing to pay to get Paulsen to come to there work yet Eagle Bank is half empty each game. How terrible is our marketing department?

 

[MasonSAE4]

Amazing we have fans willing to pay to get Paulsen to come to there work yet Eagle Bank is half empty each game. How terrible is our marketing department?

My question is at what point do we start doing more things like that game tickets were given away to schools. Surely more people in the arena creates a better atmosphere and boosts concession revenue even if you don't get any ticket money.

 

[Vurbel]

My question is at what point do we start doing more things like that game tickets were given away to schools. Surely more people in the arena creates a better atmosphere and boosts concession revenue even if you don't get any ticket money.

One could argue that even without ticket revenue more people in the door is a net positive. We'd make more $ on concessions like you said. Vendors on the concourse would have to pay more. Advertisements in the program would cost more. Verizon would pay more for their logo on the baskets. Interstate Moving/University Mall/etc. would pay more for their logos on the scorers table. Companies would pay more to put a coupon on the back of tickets. This is just scratching the surface. I don't know all the marketing that goes with it, but from the outside looking in it looks like there are more positives than negatives to giving away tickets for non-premium seating.

 

[MasonSAE4]

One could argue that even without ticket revenue more people in the door is a net positive. We'd make more $ on concessions like you said. Vendors on the concourse would have to pay more. Advertisements in the program would cost more. Verizon would pay more for their logo on the baskets. Interstate Moving/University Mall/etc. would pay more for their logos on the scorers table. Companies would pay more to put a coupon on the back of tickets. This is just scratching the surface. I don't know all the marketing that goes with it, but from the outside looking in it looks like there are more positives than negatives to giving away tickets for non-premium seating.

Yeah I'm with you. If we average 4,000 there's no reason we can't give away the same amount (for games that aren't vcu). We know the place won't be full and I'd rather have a loud arena and some home court advantage.

 

[Vurbel]

Yeah I'm with you. If we average 4,000 there's no reason we can't give away the same amount (for games that aren't vcu). We know the place won't be full and I'd rather have a loud arena and some home court advantage.

Maybe we could start by giving away 4000 tickets for non conference games? I'm not sure what the downside would be, other than less parking or longer lines to buy overpriced food.

 

[MasonGradSquared]

Hopefully Coach P will recruit a few new Pat Club members at this thing. Thanks for sharing; I'm looking forward to it!

 

[Vurbel]

Hopefully Coach P will recruit a few new Pat Club members at this thing. Thanks for sharing; I'm looking forward to it!

Or one millionaire!

 

[MakeMasonFunAgain]

This should be a good time. Mason needs more events like this, it'll be a great way for the program to connect with fans.

 

[GMUSig03]

Please join Chris Durlak, Steven Dunn, Patrick Rooney, Tony & Mary DiBenedetto, and Dustin & Katie Gunderson for a special reception with George Mason Head Basketball Coach Dave Paulsen on Wednesday October 5th from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. at Purple Strategies (815 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, VA 22314). Also joining us is Brad Edwards, George Mason Athletic Director and former Redskins Safety and runner up MVP of Super Bowl XXVI.

Food and beverages will be provided.

We’re asking for a $25 per person contribution to the GMU Foundation. Your contribution is completely tax deductible to the fullest extent allowed by the law.

Please RSVP to chris.durlak@purplestrategies.com and then use the following link to donate to the GMU Foundation http://bit.ly/2crdmmp. Please be sure to select "Friend’s of Men’s Basketball" when making your contribution.

This event is going to be a lot of fun and we really hope you can join us!

Unless you are one of the organizers, are you sure this is supposed to be a public invite? This was initially sent out as a private invitation, if no other reason it is being held in a location with limited space and not the RAC.

 

[Patriot8]

Yeah I'm with you. If we average 4,000 there's no reason we can't give away the same amount (for games that aren't vcu). We know the place won't be full and I'd rather have a loud arena and some home court advantage.

Free tickets doesn't necessarily mean higher attendance. I work in a D1 athletic department on the corporate partnership side, and we run into this problem/question all the time. Every year our department passes out thousands of free tickets to our first football game of the year and the attendance is no different than any other game. More people at games would certainly aide in creating and developing corporate partners, but raising advertising rates wouldn't be an over night success. The best way to get more people out to games is to improve the product on the court.

It would also help if Mason vastly improved their outbound ticket sales effort. Bringing in a 3rd party sales agent like IMGLearfield Ticketing or Aspire would really help them get their message out.

 

[MasonSAE4]

Free tickets doesn't necessarily mean higher attendance. I work in a D1 athletic department on the corporate partnership side, and we run into this problem/question all the time. Every year our department passes out thousands of free tickets to our first football game of the year and the attendance is no different than any other game. More people at games would certainly aide in creating and developing corporate partners, but raising advertising rates wouldn't be an over night success. The best way to get more people out to games is to improve the product on the court.

It would also help if Mason vastly improved their outbound ticket sales effort. Bringing in a 3rd party sales agent like IMGLearfield Ticketing or Aspire would really help them get their message out.

Yeah I mean I'm not for raising advertising rates because I feel like our sponsors would see through that, but I think it may raise gameday revenue and create a better atmosphere. Are you saying that you see literally no attendance difference or a minimal one? Because I feel like if we dished out 3,000 freebies at least a few hundred people would show up. But yeah, a winning team would be the best thing to remedy attendance.

 

[Patriot8]

Yeah I mean I'm not for raising advertising rates because I feel like our sponsors would see through that, but I think it may raise gameday revenue and create a better atmosphere. Are you saying that you see literally no attendance difference or a minimal one? Because I feel like if we dished out 3,000 freebies at least a few hundred people would show up. But yeah, a winning team would be the best thing to remedy attendance.

Extremely minimal return on the free tickets. I think trying it once would be fine for Mason, but I certainly wouldn't make it a habit for all non-premium games.

Also, when I said that raising advertising rates wouldn't be an overnight success, I meant with current partners. They can start by raising the rates for the new business they are pitching and slowly bring their current partners up to the new level over time. (This is exactly what I am in the process of doing)

 

[mkaufman1]

Unless you are one of the organizers, are you sure this is supposed to be a public invite? This was initially sent out as a private invitation, if no other reason it is being held in a location with limited space and not the RAC.

I got an email about it and asked one of the organizers how they got my name and they said I was on a list of alumni who lived in Arlington and gave before, so I suspect that and knowing the posse involved with the event gets an invite. Therefore I suspect they are opening the invitation and it just so happened it got put on here.

 

[DreSmithFan]

Unless you are one of the organizers, are you sure this is supposed to be a public invite? This was initially sent out as a private invitation, if no other reason it is being held in a location with limited space and not the RAC.

The event is on facebook and 157 people are invited.

No need for the missive Shannon.

 

[Vurbel]

We're talking about free tickets - man, are we ready for the season to start or what? Or at least the open practice in 3 weeks.

 

[GMUSig03]

The event is on facebook and 157 people are invited.

No need for the missive Shannon.

The event is a PRIVATE event on facebook which the invitees to do not have the authority to invite others to.

Just want everyone to be aware that DreSmithFan decided on this own to make the invite "public", without checking with the organizers about space availability or anything for that matter.

 

[DreSmithFan]

The event is a PRIVATE event on facebook which the invitees to do not have the authority to invite others to.

Just want everyone to be aware that DreSmithFan decided on this own to make the invite "public", without checking with the organizers about space availability or anything for that matter.

And what do you want? Brownie points with them or something?

 

[GMUSig03]

And what do you want? Brownie points with them or something?

I want the efforts of people actually doing things to benefit the program not be mucked up by inconsiderate assclowns.

 

[GMUSig03]

I want the efforts of people actually doing things to benefit the program not be mucked up by inconsiderate assclowns.

In about 30 seconds I was able to confirm that there are significant space limitations and too many reservations could cause a significant problem for the organizers. Unfortunately DSF didn't have the time to check about that before posting.