CSU football season ticket sales at 5-year high

Fort Collins residents have voiced the most opposition to an on-campus stadium, but they're also the most dedicated supporters of CSU football.

Colorado State University's largest alumni base resides an hour's drive south down Interstate 25, but it's the local fans who are the lifeblood of the school's athletic program, purchasing 31/2 times as many football season tickets than Ram fans in the Denver metro area.

Two months remain until CSU kicks off the season at Hughes Stadium against Savannah State, and season tickets have already reached a five-year high, surpassing 7,100 on June 1. Of that total, 54.5 percent — 3,873 — were tied to addresses in Fort Collins.

PHOTOS:Respite Care visits CSU football practice

By comparison, 812 season tickets have been bought by fans in the Northern Colorado communities of Loveland, Windsor, Timnath, Wellington and Greeley, while 1,097 are from the Denver area.

Despite having more than 47,000 alumni in Denver versus the 29,613 in Larimer County, such a strong contingent of ticket holders from Fort Collins isn't a surprise to CSU athletic director Joe Parker.

The proximity of CSU to Denver — close to a major metro area while not officially part of it — is different than most universities he's worked at, such as Texas Tech (Lubbock is five hours from Dallas-Fort Worth) and Michigan (Ann Arbor is a suburb of Detroit). However, the convenience of attending games in town on a Saturday has always allowed marketing strategists to focus local.

"You think about the size of our community of 150,000 and then you capture what else is here in Northern Colorado, and it probably expands to 400,000 — at least," Parker said. "But it's also very gratifying to know that as we build our base, which is here in Fort Collins and a little bit beyond, it's an hour drive from a 1.6 million person (designated market area) with Denver.

(Scroll down to see a map of season ticket sales)

AN UPDATE: CSU stadium moves slower than similar projects

Ben Lorenzen, senior associate athletic director for sales, marketing and communications, believes the upswing is, in part, because of the program's rise due to back-to-back bowl appearances and a new coaching staff, but the new on-campus stadium that's scheduled to open in 2017 helps momentum.

And if fans want better seats in the new venue, they need to start buying season tickets now.

CSU hasn't started selling seats or suites for the on-campus stadium yet, but Parker said the university is beginning to implement a point program within the Ram Club that takes into account donations (academic and athletic) and number of years as a season ticket holder.

"That's what we'll use when we take all of the season ticket holders that are at Hughes and place them in the new stadium. That will be our guideline/road map to allow us to be fair and equitable when we go through that process.

"When you've made consecutive annual gifts and maintained a relationship with a season ticket renewal, you're going to make progress toward receiving a better location."

Season ticket sales for Hughes Stadium have steadily risen during the past five years, with the most significant jump coming between the 2013 and 2014 seasons, increasing from 6,710 to 7,034. The primary driver?

BY THE NUMBERS:Colorado State on-campus stadium

Again, Fort Collins.

More than 300 additional season packages have been purchased this year by local residents than were purchased in 2013, and 200 more than 2014. Denver metro, on the other hand, is up only seven over last year.

Lorenzen isn't sure what the football program's best year for season ticket sales was, citing a lack of recordkeeping from the program's heyday under former coach Sonny Lubick in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That being said, because of increased prices, the $1.5 million in revenue tied to the tickets sold so far for 2015 is believed to be a record. CSU brought in $1.3 million in revenue from season tickets in 2014.

To put that in perspective, the $1.5 million brought in by season ticket sales to date is more than a quarter of the total revenue CSU football claimed during the 2014 fiscal year.

Season ticket packages start at $140 and go up to $1,525. That's up from the starting point for season tickets in 2013: $130 and $125 in 2009.

The goal, of course, is to sell out Hughes Stadium's 22,200 season tickets (10,300 of the 32,500 seats in the stadium are reserved for students and visiting team fans). There has been just 32 percent of that sold to date, so there's work to do.

The University of Colorado has sold 17,309 of its 32,750 available season tickets.

CSU is making a push, doubling the size of its outbound sales team. In addition, there's a non-sponsored effort from the community that will reward the fan who sells the most season tickets by Aug. 31 with a six-night stay in Costa Rica.

"We'd like to sell out everything in the stadium as a season basis and really create an energy by doing that," Parker said. " ... Given our pricing model (with season packages costing less than buying individual tickets for each game), if we sold out on a season basis versus having a full stadium where it's a combination of season and individual game, we're probably sacrificing some revenue, but in my mind, season sellouts are better than working every game week to try to get there.

"Right now, we're not there."

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.

Mobile app users, click here to view the map.