AA changes season tickets

The second phase of the Athletic Association's (AA) plan to prevent the organization's bankruptcy was announced Tuesday. The AA is creating a Tech Fund in which certain season-ticket holders would be required to give an annual donation in order to keep their seats.

"Right now, our ticket holders and donors are giving on annual basis to Alexander Tharpe fund. That's our annual giving mechanism. What we hope to do is not ask for those gifts any longer. All annual money coming in will be based on the number of seats and locations of those seats in the football stadium and basketball arena. We looked and we said that it's much more of a constant stream of revenue with that mechanism as opposed to annual giving," said Dan Radakovich, director of Athletics.

According to Radakovich, the plan is to reach a larger group of people.

"By utilizing only 18,000 seats in the football stadium and somewhere around 4500-4600 seats in the basketball arena, based on ticket sales from 2005, we will make more money in that way than continuing with an annual giving program, the way it is today. That will free up the Alexander Tharpe fund to do things on a large scale, for example, facility gifts, endowments and building our endowment base, which will be important for us to hedge against inflation in the years to come," Radakovich said.

The AA wants to change their focus, while utilizing Tech's two major aspects, which are the football stadium and the basketball arena, to maintain annual revenue.

However, not all season-ticket holders are going to be required to pay an annual donation.

"Certainly our visitor tickets, student tickets and other tickets won't have annual contributions attached to them. So, their season tickets would be purchased for the face value of the tickets," Radakovich said.

The tickets requiring the donation are sideline seats in football, as well as lower seats and mid-court seats in men's basketball.

"[Season-ticket holders are] just another leg on our three-legged stool: our ticket holders, alumni taking on our revenue needs as we forecast into the future, the students have stepped up with great leadership and we've been working with the institute to increase more revenues also. A fourth leg is our own efficiency inside the department, and we're attempting to do that each and every day and we already have some significant savings, permanent savings, that we have acquired," Radakovich said.

According to Radakovich, the actual price of the season tickets will not go up this year.

The other aspect of balancing the budget is the contribution from the institute.

"The contribution from the institute is an ongoing process. We've come really close to finalizing a couple pieces of it.

"Once it was recognized that it was a problem and discussion started with the institute to see how we can combine resources and utilizing things the campus already has that in some ways we've been duplicating as a stand-alone enterprise," Radakovich said.

In a related story, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported that the AA is looking to sell the naming rights of Alexander Memorial Coliseum.

"That article was a little out front. We're looking at a lot of different revenue options to help our future. There's been an initiative for a number of years of trying to find a naming partner with Alexander Memorial Coliseum."

"As I said to the AJC, it's a very long process and we're not even at the first stage yet. We look at all opportunities to increase revenue within the department so that we can keep our prices competitive, that would certainly be of help, but we're not anywhere close as it comes to finalizing any kind of deal as it relates to that," Radakovich said.