Iowa WBB ticket interest booms, football renewals at ‘really good pace’

Iowa Athletics ‘paused’ deposits for brand spanking new girls’s basketball season tickets to first accommodate current season ticket holders

IOWA CITY — Iowa athletics director Gary Barta has observed girls’s basketball followers are “excited on the heels of nice success.”

Excited is likely to be an understatement.

The athletic division has “paused” accepting deposits for brand spanking new 2023-24 season tickets for girls’s basketball due to burgeoning demand.

The Hawkeyes obtained deposits for about 6,700 new season tickets, in line with deputy athletics director Matt Henderson.

The pause went into impact Tuesday, lower than 48 hours after Iowa’s loss to LSU within the nationwide championship sport, and the 2023-24 season stays about seven months away.

The 6,700 deposits are along with the 6,500 current season ticket holders though Barta mentioned Thursday some overlap is feasible if season ticket holders unnecessarily “tried to leap forward.”

Meaning, relying on retention charges, 13,200-plus individuals may probably be within the queue for season tickets for the 15,056-seat area.

Season ticket retention charges are prone to be excessive forward of Caitlin Clark’s senior season, and a few current season ticket holders might buy extra seats than in 2022-23.

“Now we have to verify we’ve got room for them first, after which we’ll tackle newcomers,” Barta mentioned of Iowa’s 2022-23 season ticket holders.

The precise variety of season tickets Iowa will make accessible is murky at this early stage of the offseason, however it would absolutely be beneath the world’s 15,056-person capability.

Iowa should account for the visiting workforce allotment and scholar tickets.

Barta additionally desires to “make certain we’ve got sufficient tickets ready” for season ticket holders to have entry to tickets for the primary two rounds of the NCAA event. Carver-Hawkeye Area’s capability drops to 14,382 within the postseason configuration.

Even with the booming demand, Barta is hesitant to venture a season-ticket sellout but.

“I’m positive excited concerning the enthusiasm and the joy,” Barta mentioned. “It might be enjoyable if (promoting out all season tickets) have been the case.”

In contrast to soccer and males’s basketball, Iowa has not charged for girls’s basketball scholar tickets.

“We do cost for soccer, we do cost for males’s basketball, and perhaps sometime we’ll get to the purpose the place we have to cost for the opposite sports activities in the event that they’re promoting out regularly,” Barta mentioned. “However at this level, we haven’t had that dialogue.”

The precise variety of Iowa girls’s basketball tickets put aside for college kids in 2023-24 isn’t clear but.

“In soccer and males’s basketball, for instance, we base it on previous historical past — what number of have attended and bought tickets prior to now — and we’ll do one thing comparable with girls’s basketball,” Barta mentioned.

Soccer season tickets

A pair blocks south of Carver-Hawkeye Area, Barta mentioned the renewal fee for soccer season tickets at Kinnick Stadium is “between 85 and 90 %” to date.

“That’s on a extremely good tempo,” Barta mentioned.

The deadline to resume season tickets was March 31, however athletic division officers anticipate an uptick from individuals who missed the deadline due to miscellaneous causes.

Iowa lower the worth from season tickets at Kinnick Stadium for 2023 by $10 to $25, relying on seat location. The Hawkeyes are coming off an 8-5 season and have fewer marquee video games on the 2023 schedule.

Feedback: john.steppe@thegazette.com