Ticket Sales “Very Slow” In Nashville For UK-WKU Game

August 19th, 2011 01:44 PM║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Schools: Kentucky
Tags: Nashville Sports Council, Scott Ramsey, UK, Western Kentucky

Send This Story To A Friend

A few facts to start this post:

1. Kentucky and Western Kentucky will open the season against one another… in Nashville. Nashville, Tennessee.

2. The game will be played on a Thursday night with a 9:15 ET kickoff.

3. The Wildcat fanbase is well known for caring a lot more about basketball than football…

4. Even when UK is coming off a better season than a disappointing 6-7 campaign…

5. And facing a better opponent than Western Kentucky which is coming off a dreadful 2-10 campaign.

Now, here’s what the head of the Nashville Sports Council said yesterday about ticket sales for the game that he described as “very slow”:

“We’re a little befuddled, a little big disappointed. We thought we’d be doing a little better at this point than we are. But there’s still time.”

Scott Ramsey also admitted that the goal for the game was to fill 40,000 seats in the 67,000-seat stadium. Ticket sales are not even on pace for that number right now.

Here’s our only question: Looking at the five facts we listed above, how could anyone be “befuddled” that UK fans coming off a disappointing season last year aren’t snapping up tickets to drive to another state and watch the Cats play a terrible WKU team on a weeknight?

5 comments

Newest | Oldest

Donnie M

The outsider attitude that UK fans care more about basketball is wrong. Kentucky fans are wildcat fans. Basketball has had more success and
naturally attracts more interest. 40, 000 in Tampa for the Outback Bowl, 50,000 in Nashville for two bowl games shows that football is BIG in Kentucky. The late time and Thursday night is hurting this game.

johnmrsec

Donnie M...

You might want to do a Google search on Randall Cobb's post-South Carolina Twitter rant last season. That's about as inside an opinion as you can get.

Thanks for reading the site,
John

lazlo toth

If they wanted to have better attendance on a weekday game in Nashville, Why not schedule WKU or MTSU vs Vanderbilt?

a) close for both schools
b) neither is great, so it would be a closer game in final score
c) 9pm start time might have been a smaller issue

Brandon

In all fairness, UK has sold out 3 or 4 Music City Bowls in the last decade, so it wasn't idiotic to think they'd come out. I think there's a pretty solid contingent of UK fans here in Nashville planning to get tix at the game. I know that's what me and my 4 buddies are doing. Maybe playing someone like MTSU would have been a better idea, though.