Frankly, the biggest reason I still have tickets is that it's not hard to get down to campus from where I'm at.
After the 2014 season, which featured the first wins over Nebraska and Michigan in a long time as well as a 51-14 flogging of Iowa, AD Norwood Teague decided that it was time to re-seat and significantly up the price in 3 stages, starting with fall 2015. It wrecked the season ticket base. Teague would be fired later that summer for sexually harassing two high-ranking University employees, so it goes without saying that his judgement was questionable at best. A poster at the Gopher Hole has compiled the number of season tickets sold when it gets released through FOIA filings. Since 2013, here it is:
Season tix sold |
2013 | 33284 |
2014 | 33385 |
2015 | 27885 |
2016 | 22706 |
2017 | 22990 |
2018 | 21682 |
2019 | 21689 |
2021 | 23636 |
2022 | 23443 |
2023 | 25317 or 25396 |
2024 | 23592 |
2025 | 23089 |
The 3rd stage of the price hike was supposed to happen before the 2017 season, but was halted after the whole Clayes fiasco that eventually led to the hiring of PJ Fleck.
I was curious so I looked it up.
In 2013 the Gophers were coming off of four consecutive losing seasons:
- 6-7 in 2009
- 3-9 in 2010
- 3-9 in 2011
- 6-7 in 2012
Then they had winning (8-5) records in both 2013 and 2014. Usually that drives ticket sales up and 2014 was marginally higher than 2013 but 2015 sales were almost 6k off of 2014. That shouldn't happen coming off of back-to-back pretty good seasons. They stumbled to 6-7 in 2015 which would normally cause ticket sales to drop a bit but 5k? That is almost 20%. They had a 9-4 record in 2016 so demand should have been up and it was, but only by <300 tickets.
2017 was another losing season and sales dropped in 2018 but only by ~300. My supposition is that the ~21k still buying in 2018/2019 is pretty near Minnesota's floor.
2018 was a barely winning (7-6) season but it didn't help as 2019 sales were basically unchanged from 2018.
In 2019 the Gophers went 11-2 and finished in the top-10! The 2019 team went 6-1 at home featuring a 34-7 thumping of Nebraska (yeah, Nebraska was a 5-7 team but how many thumpings of the Cornhuskers can any living Gopher fan remember?) and a thrilling win over #5 Penn State. Ordinarily that would have pushed ticket demand through the roof for the following season but COVID interfered.
After the COVID season, they sold a few thousand more tickets than pre-covid in 2021. 2021 and 2022 were back-to-back 9-4 years that got demand up to around 25.5k but that is still ~8k off of where they were in 2013/2014 and it dropped in 2024 after a losing season in 2023.
