Despite coronavirus, Ray Tanner says football ticket renewal numbers are up
The South Carolina football program saw the first increase in season ticket numbers in years in 2019, owing to a schedule that included Alabama and Clemson coming to Williams-Brice.
Matching those numbers projected to be difficult, as the home slate lacks any unusual headline games or the rival Tigers, and the threat of the coronavirus pandemic casts doubt about if the season will go off on planned.
But according to USC athletics director Ray Tanner in a radio interview on 107.5 The Game, season ticket renewals are actually up slightly.
“In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had numerous conversations with Lance Grantham, who runs our ticket operations,” Tanner said “Our numbers are slightly up. I expected because of the situation that we’re in with this virus that people might be cautious, but our renewals end on May 8 and we’ll start seat selections too here shortly. But we’re slightly up, which I’m delighted about.”
Through the opening week last season, USC sold 47,500 season tickets, an uptick from 2018. The number of season tickets sold in the past decade-plus peaked in 2014 at 54,005 and had slipped each season since them.
South Carolina has already promised there will be refunds if games are canceled.
In 2019, ticket sales accounted for $20.1 million of $28.7 million in ticket sales for the school.
Tanner said he’s spoken to other administrators offline about the potential of football season possibly moving into the spring, but cautioned that any changes would likely be steered by both the facts on the ground at the university (if the school itself had returned to business as usual) and the college sports world in general (through the SEC and NCAA).
He also said coaches have started planning to tighten budgets, as college sports projects to take some financial hit. The department has already not yet gone in-depth about possible planning for games without fans.
“People understand that they’re not going to lose their money,” Tanner said. “If something happens and they don’t play, we’ll do refunds, as we did for softball and baseball in the spring. But people are maintaining their memberships.
“I won’t say that I’m surprised because I know the loyalty has been strong here for a long time, but I was cautious that it might be slightly down and it hasn’t been.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 2:29 PM.
