Iowa expected a drop in football season tickets, and here it is

Ever since Iowa's 2014 football season crash landed with a dismal defeat in the TaxSlayer Bowl, athletics director Gary Barta has said that he expect a downturn in season ticket sales.

In a release Tuesday, Iowa revealed that it has sold 32,656 season tickets to the general public as of June 19, a 17 percent drop from the 39,364 it sold in 2014. This total includes sales of all seats available in the premium seat areas inside Kinnick Stadium. The total doesn't include most of the season tickets likely to be purchased by more than 650 new general public season ticket holders, according to the release.

'We're anticipating and conservatively preparing for a down tick there,” Barta told The Gazette in May. 'The reality there is we start selling single-game tickets. Depending on the weather, depending on success, that number could exceed last year's number, you just have to rely more on weather and early success in order to sell those tickets rather than presell them all in July.”

In Tuesday's release, despite the decrease, Barta said believes another year-over-year increase in per game attendance and another Top 25 ranking in attendance are attainable goals.

'This isn't a surprise. We expected a decline in the general public category, planned for it during the budgeting process, and jump-started our group sales for 2015 in response to it,” Barta said in a statement. 'Now that we are well down the path of executing our plan, I believe our goals of another increase in per game attendance and another year with a ranking in the Top 25 are attainable.”

Iowa has yet to release its athletics budget for 2016, but this downturn in football season tickets was anticipated.

Barta said in May that has seen a shift in revenue the last few years, with tickets losing some ground and Big Ten TV revenues gaining.

In 2006, Big Ten TV revenue was 23 percent of Iowa's revenue. In 2016, it could be as much as 35 to 37 percent. Also, Iowa had another record year in fundraising, back-to-back record years now, and that will be 23 or 24 percent of the 2016 budget.

The Hawkeyes' average attendance of 67,512 in 2014 ranked 22nd in the country and was a slight increase over the 67,125 from 2013, which marked the first season Iowa's average home attendance dipped below 70,000 since 2004. During the Kirk Ferentz era, the low for Kinnick attendance was 61.123 in 2000. Iowa has averaged a capacity 70,585 five times during Ferentz's 17 seasons.

According to the release, the UI ended the 2014 season with 39,364 general public season tickets sold. Also, the UI sells a couple of thousand season tickets to the general public between July and mid-September.

Between the summer purchases and the 650-plus new season ticket holders, Iowa expects to reach between 35,000 and 37,000 season tickets sold to the general public.

'We sold season tickets yesterday to fans who called to learn more about our three-game ticket option,” Barta said in the release.

According to the release, Barta noted that sales of season tickets to UI faculty and staff are down. He hopes those sales eventually will reach last year's totals (4,005 for faculty/staff and 6,444 for students).

Trying to spin a gloomy number into something else in this release, Barta said ticket sales to current UI students are up and sales to incoming freshmen are up 40 percent.

The UI athletics ticket office began accepting orders for three-game ticket packages on Monday. Single game sales will begin in early July.

'We're committed to regaining our momentum,” Barta said in the release. 'Some of that is related to doing everything possible to make the game-day experience fun, entertaining, and memorable. Some of that, of course, is related to what happens on the playing field and, ultimately, winning.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com