After fans weren’t allowed to attend Purdue football games in 2020 due to the pandemic, there is a pent-up demand to watch live action in Ross-Ade Stadium. Just ask Tom Moreland.
“Get on board now, because everybody else is,” said Purdue’s associate athletics director for strategic initiatives. “Look at the people joining the John Purdue Club, people joining or contributing to the ‘More Than A Game’ campaign, renewals of season tickets, student season tickets, new season tickets. People are excited to get back to Purdue's campus, to come to Ross-Ade and come back to live events.”
The numbers back up what Moreland is talking about. Purdue has sold 1,350 new season tickets, according to Moreland. And the renewal rate for season ticket holders is 92 percent. All told, Purdue has sold 21,413 season tickets thus far. In 2019, the last time fans could attend games, Purdue sold 22,470 season tickets.
“As far as new season tickets this year, just from the calls that our ticket offices is getting, emails, our sales reps talking to people ... I don't want to put a definitive number on it, but that number (current season tickets sold) that I shared with you, I think we're going to grow significantly.”
Purdue has time on its side, as the home opener on Sept. 4 vs. Oregon State is still over three months away.
A big reason for early season ticket sales success can be traced to students purchasing a Boarding Pass—which guarantees a ticket to every home football game and will have free access to all home, regular-season men's basketball, women's basketball and volleyball games. So far, Moreland says the Purdue ticket office has sold 7,000 Boarding Passes. That's 1,000 above the pace at the same time of year in 2019.
“We fully expect to sell out the Boarding Pass, like we have the last few years,” said Moreland. “Our students are excited about coming to games, and they've been terrific.”
Due to the pandemic, fans couldn’t attend Purdue games in 2020. Moreland estimates that 52 percent of those who purchased season tickets in 2020 opted to roll their money toward 2021 season tickets. And about 15 percent chose to donate their 2020 season ticket money to the “More Than A Game” campaign by the John Purdue Club.
The athletic department recently announced that it has raised $15 million of its $18 million goal for the “More Than A Game” fund-raising effort that was started in August 2020 to help cover monetary shortfalls incurred due to the pandemic.
With ticket sales going well, the question remains: Will Ross-Ade Stadium be at full capacity in 2021?
“We're not making an announcement right now,” said Moreland. “We'll continue to work with our trustees and president's office in all those areas. We think everything is trending the right way, but there's just not a race to the microphone to announce capacity.”
When fans do come to Ross-Ade Stadium in the fall, they will notice some changes.
“The next month, we will provide our fans with several different enhancements to the customer experience that we've been working on for the last year,” said Moreland. “That's really improving the south end zone patio, that's improving our parking, that's improving our entrance to parking lots, our entrance to the stadium, things like digital tickets and digital parking passes are going to improve all those things.
“We want our fans to know we will over communicate that information, our reps will reach out personally, they will receive all that information weeks ahead of time so that when they come to that first game against Oregon State on September 4, we're going to try to make it as seamless as possible.”
One game not on the home schedule has drawn a lot of interest from fans: vs. Northwestern on Nov. 20 in Wrigley Field. What is Moreland’s advice to secure tickets?
“Put in your request with the athletics ticket office, call the ticket office, talk to the John Purdue Club,” he said. “There is tremendous interest. We will have an allotment of tickets for that game, and we'll provide them based on our John Purdue Club system. But, yeah, it'll be awesome. It'll be great, but I would just tell fans to make sure to communicate your interest about tickets to the Wrigley Field.”
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