Iowa drops ticket prices for men's basketball

In an effort to regain some basketball fans as the men's program continues to rebuild, Iowa's athletics department has sliced prices for all of its men's basketball tickets.

Iowa cut season tickets by nearly 20 percent, and cut prices on single-game tickets as well. Iowa slashed public season tickets to $278, a $58 reduction from last year.

Faculty/staff tickets were reduced by $56 to $238 for a season ticket. Student ticket prices remain unchanged.

Single-game ticket prices also were cut. All weekend Big Ten games were reduced by $2 to $25. All midweek Big Ten games, the ACC-Big Ten Challenge matchup against Virginia Tech and the intrastate game against Drake are $20 a ticket, also a $2 reduction. The other non-conference games were chopped nearly in half at $12 a ticket.

“One of the things we did was we addressed something our fans have been frustrated with for a while, and that's the pricing structure of the non-conference games,” said Rick Klatt, Iowa's associate athletics director for external affairs. “So the bulk of our reduction comes in adjusting those prices a little bit.”

For season-ticket holders, the total price comes out as $21 for weekend Big Ten games, $17 for the midweek Big Ten, Virginia Tech and Drake games, and $10 for non-conference games. Prices will remain the same throughout the arena.

Iowa has struggled recently with attendance, The Hawkeyes averaged 10,861 fans per game last year, an increase of about 100 from the 2007-08 season. But it's way off from the 2000-01 season where Iowa averaged a sellout.

Iowa offered single-game tickets for $10 each for the final five home basketball games last year. That helped boost attendance but it angered many season-ticket holders who paid full price for those tickets in their package. Klatt said there will be no reduction this year.

“We just won't do that,” he said. “We heard from enough season-ticket holders that understood our problem but as I've always said, our best fans are season-ticket holders and we have to listen to them closely because they're hard to get and we don't want to upset them.”

Iowa students can attend two games free this year - against Virginia Tech and an undetermined Big Ten game. Klatt said his office has sold 990 student season tickets so far, already equaling last year's number. Klatt said the student seating area will be altered toward the visiting bench this year.

Klatt said the athletics department also will shake up its gameday environment with undetermined changes.

“There are clearly things within our control that we can do better and/or differently,” Klatt said. “Where I sit clearly the basketball program is beginning to turn the corner, and we simply have to be turning the corner with it - if not ahead of it - in terms of the things we do on a game night.”