Michigan lowers student ticket price for 2015
Michigan's embattled athletic director Dave Brandon announced Thursday night that prices for a student season ticket in 2015 will decrease by nearly 40 percent.
In conjunction with the Central Student Government, the school's athletic department said prices will decrease from $280 to $175 for next year’s seven-game home slate. That marked a 37.5 percent decrease.
"We listen,” Brandon told The Michigan Daily. “We’ve been listening. ... We really learned that two really important components to re-engaging with our students in trying to create a more robust, more enthusiastic and larger student section for next year’s football season was price and strength of schedule."
The athletic director may have also been listening to the ever-persistent calls for his head weeks ago. Thursday's move appears to show that he was taking those calls extra seriously.
"A nearly 40-percent reduction in ticket prices is, I think it’s fair to say, unprecedented,” Brandon boasted to the news outlet.
The new plan, which incorporated feedback from a student survey, will also implement a new reduced-pricing structure for students with financial need. Moreover, prices for non-students will stay the same for the third straight year.
The amount of student season tickets dropped to 12,000 in 2014 from about 19,000 in 2013.
Stadium looks more full than usual pic.twitter.com/HqwOJZyZ4f
— angelique (@chengelis) October 11, 2014
Fans have expressed their discontent over the way Brandon has transformed Michigan's typically traditional gameday experience, particularly for basketball and football. Some charge the athletic director with creating a branded and less authentic atmosphere at home games since he arrived in Ann Arbor in early 2010.
Still, the move to lower ticket prices may buy Brandon some time with angry fans.
“This is really us being us. I don’t know of another school who’s lowering ticket prices 40 percent,” Brandon added. "Michigan football is such a core component (of the university experience) because there’s no other experience on campus that more students participate in at one time.”