LOYAL AG said:
KaneIsAble said:
They are going to reseat the place too like Kyle once it's all said and done. It's my understanding that I will have the ability to keep my seats but only if I pay the difference to catch up in points to secure them.
Not cool - I love my seats.
They haven't said this yet to my knowledge. The reseating of Kyle was "justified" because the original seating was torn down. They reseated Olsen in 2012 and again argued that they had materially changed the configuration which was kind of true given they added the club and created a Row 1 in sections behind the dugouts. I doubt the lower deck gets much in the way of changes to how it is configured with this remodel.
They've used Hop as a sounding board of sorts and he has told them they're going to lose season ticket holders in the lower deck if those seats become tied to football priority points and they force long time ticket holders out over money. Big donors in Dallas/Houston will buy those seats and never use them which will kill the environment. For me all I've asked for is a legit opportunity to buy my seats where I've been for 30 years almost. If they double the price I'll consider that even knowing they just doubled it in 2023. If they give me a $20k+ bill just to buy priority points then double them I'll just check out and go join Kman at Messina Hof.
Baseball isn't football and tying the two together and telling the locals who have been there forever that their commitment to baseball doesn't matter anymore would be a poor decision. My 25 and 22 yo kids joke about wanting me to leave them my tickets in my will and I find myself wondering if A&M is going to run me off for more money long before that day comes. We'll see.
I hope they do it the way you suggest, as I love my seats (been in the same seats, more or less, for 35 years) and my neighbors, so it would be nice to have the opportunity to keep both.
They are aware of the problem that would be posed by doing a Kyle Field style priority points free for all, which, as you say, would result in a bunch of high priority point folks from out of town acquiring all the seats and running off season ticket holders who bought seats for decades without getting any priority point credit for their support.
The problem is that while they will add new seating, including new premium seating, they have to have something good enough to entice donors to the renovation project to write big checks. If someone has $1 million to donate to the project and tells the TMF, "All I want is 2 club seats," right now, the TMF would have to say, sorry, you'll have to wait for someone to die. Will these folks make that kind of donation for premium seating down the 3rd base line? That's the real question. If so, then they could probably rely upon a combination of new seating and further raising ticket prices (or more likely, requiring capital contributions like they did with Kyle Field) in order to shake loose a few seats in choice areas.
But, I sort of suspect that they will do some kind of reseating, as this would make fundraising much easier for new donors and folks who have tickets, but aren't satisfied with what they have (the folks who have priority points, and have bought singles anywhere just to get in the park).
If I was put in charge of that task, what I would do is figure out how many new seats we will have that can be sold as season tickets, then allow anyone who has donated a certain figure to the project to be allocated a corresponding number of unassigned seats (probably limited to 4), then, if you have any left over, we go through the folks who have been through the ticket selection process the last several years and not gotten a seat, then if you still have some left, open it up to priority points. These people would be added to the current season ticket holder base, and that would be your pool for seat selection. Everyone who has a seat now would be guaranteed to have one after the reseating, but they would do the reseating of the entire stadium by priority points.
I don't know whether I would still be able to get tickets in the lower bowl if we did that, but, if they do a priority points reseating, that's probably the fairest way to do it. I would prefer that they just up the ante and see if that shakes enough seats loose, but I fear that there are too many folks wanting in to prime seats for them to do that.
