Mississippi State softball prepares for first ticketed season

Samantha Ricketts finally saw Mississippi State softball’s onboarding potential realized when the Bulldogs unexpectedly hosted an NCAA Super Regional in 2022.

MSU lost its opening-round game at the Tallahassee Regional that year but proceeded to win four elimination games to advance, defeating host and No. 2 national seed Florida State twice in the regional final. When No. 15 seed Missouri also lost its regional final at home to Arizona, the Bulldogs suddenly found themselves back in Starkville facing the Wildcats with a trip to the Women’s College World Series on the line.

Arizona defeated MSU in two games, but the series attracted capacity crowds at Nusz Park of more than 2,200 fans for both contests. The spectacle helped Ricketts see firsthand that Bulldogs fans had an appetite for softball, and this year, for the first time in program history, MSU will be charging admission for all home games.

“When it came time to sell tickets (for the Super Regional), we had no season ticket holders to offer out the postseason tickets to first,” the Bulldogs’ head coach said. “It really created a little bit of a madhouse and a rush for these tickets with no standard for it within the program because we hadn’t sold (them).”

Mike Richey, the athletic department’s executive director of principal giving, oversees softball and helped facilitate the ticketing process ahead of the Super Regional. With the success MSU had attracting fans to buy tickets for the biggest games the program had ever hosted, Ricketts began to think about making softball a ticketed sport.

The arrival of Zac Selmon as athletic director in January 2023 only accelerated those conversations. Selmon had spent more than a decade in administrative roles at Oklahoma, which won its third straight national championship in softball last year, sells out every home game and brings large contingents of fans on the road — and also happens to be Ricketts’ alma mater.

MSU opened its brand-new softball fieldhouse last August, a space that includes five new batting cages, a modern and spacious locker room, a players’ lounge and a media and film room. After investing in the player experience with those upgrades, the next steps for the program are geared toward enhancing the fan experience, which would be difficult to do without bringing in revenue from ticket sales.

“We can bring in new lights for the stands, and we can have more amenities surrounding it,” Ricketts said. “Now we’ll know exactly the number of fans to expect, so it’s going to help us elevate and make changes. The building we just built was for the student-athletes, but now we want to really take care of the fans coming to games.”

Ole Miss and Georgia are now the only Southeastern Conference softball programs offering free admission, and MSU’s prices are comparable to most of its SEC peers and significantly cheaper than those at Auburn and Florida.

All tickets are general admission with no assigned seating, and season tickets are priced at $99 with single-game tickets at $8 for adults and $5 for children. Large groups and students will receive discounts.

“There’s a lot of folks who have their preferred seat they’ve been sitting in for a long time, and they’ve got friends,” said Tom Greene, MSU athletics’ deputy director for external engagement. “We thought we would take a more cautious approach, do (general admission) tickets.”

Greene said MSU is not necessarily looking to make softball a net revenue driver, but the department is hoping to break even and offset the additional costs of selling tickets, primarily ticket scanners and security personnel. He and Ricketts both mentioned food trucks as an additional amenity for fans, and season-ticket holders will have the first priority for purchasing tickets to any postseason games the Bulldogs host.

With construction for the fieldhouse ongoing last spring, MSU played just 25 regular-season home games in 2023, compared to 35 the year prior. This year, the Bulldogs have 28 home games on their schedule, starting with the Alex Wilcox Memorial tournament, also called The Snowman, on the season’s opening weekend from Feb. 9-11.

Perennial mid-major power Louisiana visits Nusz Park for a doubleheader on Feb. 13, and the SEC schedule features marquee home series against Texas A&M, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia.

“Our goal was to do our due diligence and research and make sure we set this up the right way,” Greene said. “Ideally, we’d set it up from an economic standpoint where we’re not losing money. We’ll want to keep improving some of the fan amenities over time, and those additional expenses will probably essentially negate the additional revenue. That being said, I think we’re going to learn a lot this first year.”

The softball program has been active in the Starkville community for a long time, including sponsoring youth baseball and softball clinics, and Ricketts said that community involvement can help drive up attendance numbers. MSU is also working to stagger its softball start times to avoid overlapping with baseball games when both teams are home to give fans the opportunity to attend both events in one day.

Even factoring in the two Super Regional games, the Bulldogs’ average attendance increased slightly last year compared to 2022, with crowds exceeding 1,000 fans for the Bulldogs’ two home games against Oklahoma in March and for a Saturday game against Alabama during Super Bulldog Weekend in April.

“We’ve done a great job taking care of the student-athletes, but now we want to grow the atmosphere at Nusz Park and we want to make it a true home-field advantage,” Ricketts said. “(There are) some things we could potentially… add to the environment that makes it a big event, along the lines of what the Super Regional was. That’s our benchmark, and we want it to be that big of a feel and (create) excitement around game days, especially SEC weekends.”