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Tuesday, February 15, 2000

UH fans to pay
price of success

Football tickets will cost more,
and a premium for some
sections is proposed

By Paul Arnett
Star-Bulletin

University of Hawaii athletic director Hugh Yoshida will recommend not only raising individual ticket prices for football games this fall, but charge an additional premium adjustment of $25 for certain sideline sections and $12 for others.

Season tickets for eight home games will cost $140 for sideline seats and $122 for end zone. That's the same rate fans paid for nine home games last year.

But in addition to that base rate, fans buying tickets in sections MM, LL, KK, JJ, M, L, K and J in the orange, blue and brown levels also will pay a $25 premium for each seat.

A $12 premium fee will be attached to fans sitting in the orange, blue and brown sections of QQ, PP, NN, HH, GG, FF, Q, P, N, H, G, F and south end zone seats in the brown level only.

Yoshida is scheduled to make his presentation to the Finance Committee of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at the campus center conference chamber.

The recommendation to raise ticket prices for football already was approved by the athletic department ticket committee on Jan. 21 and the athletic advisory board on Jan. 26.

Individual prices will range from $24 for sideline and $20 for end zone seats for the season opener with the University of Texas and the season finale with Wisconsin, to $17 for sideline and $14 for end zone seats for the nonconference game with Portland State.

Yoshida is hopeful Hawaii's NCAA record-setting turnaround last year will mean an increase of the season ticket base. Hawaii sold about 22,000 season tickets last year, but that is still down about 10,000 from the high-water mark of 31,000 in 1991.

Hawaii also didn't draw as well in the Oahu Bowl as athletic department and bowl officials had hoped. The number of people watching Hawaii beat Oregon State was about 35,000.

Yoshida believes the fans are coming back, but conceded the numbers weren't as good as first hoped. Hawaii averaged 38,695 tickets distributed and 36,203 fans in the house this past season.

Those numbers were up from the 1998 campaign where Hawaii distributed an average of 29,352 tickets in eight games. Actual attendance was 23,667.

That means first-year head coach June Jones' remarkable turnaround produced a 31.8 percent increase in tickets distributed and 53 percent increase in the number of fans attending games.

Yoshida said yesterday that there will be public hearings on the matter. One will be held tomorrow at 6 p.m. and another on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. in Room 106 of the athletic department.

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