Iowa 'very pleased' with Outback Bowl ticket sales

IOWA CITY — If you're an Iowa football season ticket holder and ordered your Outback Bowl tickets already, expect an early Christmas gift sometime in the next week.

Your bowl tickets either already are or will be on their way to you soon.

Iowa senior associate athletic director Matt Henderson said Tuesday nearly 6,800 tickets have been sold so far out of the Hawkeyes' 8,500 ticket allotment for this year's Outback Bowl. Season ticket holders and program contributors had first crack at the tickets available through the university, and that group will begin seeing their tickets by the end of this week or next.

The 'steady pace of sale' for the tickets has those in the athletic department 'very pleased,' Henderson said, given they've only been on sale for a little more than a week.

'While we're very pleased with the number we've sold so far, we know when we look at it that fans are very smart. They look at all different opportunities to secure bowl tickets,' Henderson said. 'I think fans in general look at all different opportunities that are available to secure tickets to a bowl game. Whether they go through the institution or the bowl directly; whether they go through a secondary ticketing service; whether they have family friends or connections down in the area where the bowl is located.'

Tickets offered from the university are sold in two price points: $80 for standard seating and $170 for club seating. Through secondary ticket service SeatGeek, with fees, tickets range from $103 to $350 for standard seating.

In general, Iowa has done a good job with its allotment, but a lot depends on where the bowl is located and the state of the team when heading to the bowl game.

Last season, for example, Iowa was allocated 22,000 tickets to the university by the Rose Bowl. Not only were those tickets all sold, but more than double were requested — approximately 54,000, Henderson said, from 'anybody and everybody.' All told, Iowa was able to sell between 25,000 and 26,000 tickets via the requested extra allotment. Juxtapose that with the TaxSlayer Bowl after the 2014 season, when Iowa was allocated 8,000 tickets and sold around 4,000.

Each bowl is different with what and how their tickets are allocated, Henderson said, and the many factors at play have to be considered. Iowa has a good history with the Outback Bowl — having been selected for the Tampa, Fla., bowl for a fifth time (2004, 2006, 2009, 2014) this year.

The allotment Iowa gets was adjusted in the last bowl agreement, and schools now are given 3,000-4,000 less tickets for bowl games than before, Henderson said. For example, the last time Iowa was in the Outback Bowl, its allotment was 11,500, and it sold 'around 9,000' tickets.

The adjustment came from the Big Ten, which keeps all bowl revenues, but provides allowances to each school — $2.05 million for Iowa — for bowl trips. Each school gets to keep that allowance regardless of number of tickets sold or the total cost of a bowl trip. If expenses exceed the allowance, each individual athletic department is responsible for the remainder out of their department budget.

Henderson said the remaining tickets through the university are on sale to the general public, and can be found on the ticket office's website or by calling the office itself.

'Our ticket office starts the allocation process and mails out the tickets (already sold) at the end of this week. Any tickets available after that, fans are able to just call in or go online through the ticket office and request tickets,' Henderson said. 'Those that have ordered, the ticket office will be mailing them through UPS beginning this week, so they should have them in hands soon.'

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