When you’ve won two home games in the last two years, a money-back-guarantee might seem a little risky.
The Stanford athletics marketing department has little choice but to take a big chance and hope that the payoff finally comes — first on the football field and then, maybe, in the stands of its sparkling but half-empty stadium.
The deal works like this: New season-ticket and new “Family Plan” buyers can ask for the “Gridiron Guarantee,” and if unsatisfied with the “entertainment value” at season’s end, the cost of the season tickets will be refunded.
“It’s good motivation for us, but that motivation is already there,” Cardinal coach Jim Harbaugh said. “We definitely want to give fans their money’s worth.”
Filling the seats in newly renovated Stanford Stadium has proven to be an elusive quest, but not for lack of effort. Family discount plans. Organic hot dogs on whole-wheat buns. Day games for fans that commute from as far as Sacramento and Marin. Night games for families with kids who play sports Saturday afternoons. Free tickets for students. If you try it, they will come, right?
Not so far. Heading into the third season of a stadium that went through a $100 million remodel, Stanford has not had a sellout. In a stadium that holds 55,500, paid attendance averaged 41,742 in the 2006 and 39,332 in 2007. Actual crowds usually were significantly smaller.
There was no full house for the stadium debut against Navy in 2006 nor for USC that same season. Plenty of good seats were still available in 2007 for UCLA and Oregon. Only 37,777 bought tickets for TCU on homecoming weekend, a week after the Cardinal upset USC. And, most painfully, no sellout for either Notre Dame, when there were almost 7,000 unsold tickets, or Cal, when there were 6,000 unsold tickets.
“We are pleased with the effort, but not pleased with the outcome,” Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby said. “There are a lot of reasons why our crowds have been small, but mostly it’s been because we are not as competitive on the field as we need to be.”
Harbaugh said that athletic-department benefactor John Arrillaga “didn’t build that stadium for a below-average football team.”
That’s exactly what the marketing department has had to endure. Bob Carruesco, the athletic department’s director of marketing, said a “superior product in every aspect” is paramount.
“Any way that we can get people to sample Stanford football is something we need to explore,” Carruesco said.
And thus the money-back guarantee was born. It is a concept that has been used in business for years, but applying it to a football team that hasn’t been to a bowl game since 2001 is a brave move.
“We’re talking entertainment value on a Saturday afternoon,” Carruesco said. “Stanford was an entertaining product last year, and that vibrancy and charisma, winning when they are not supposed to, sometimes losing when they are not supposed — it’s entertainment. The more people we expose, we think they’ll be happy with their investment.”
One issue that is largely out of Stanford’s hands is the home schedule. This year’s, frankly, is light on the marquee names. The five visiting teams are, in chronological order, Oregon State, San Jose State, Arizona, Washington State and USC.
Efforts to put two of the highest-profile opponents — Cal and Notre Dame — on an opposite-year schedule hasn’t been able to be arranged.
Bob Kinder has been attending Stanford football games since 1959. He has had his current season tickets for 25 years.
“I’m a die-hard, I would be there anyway,” Kinder said. “When the game starts, I’m far more interested in the team and the players than how many people bothered to come. It doesn’t bother me until after the game is over.”
Kinder would like to see more grassroots marketing to families participating in local youth sports leagues, but he believes a winning team is key to creating wholesale change.
“The thing is, not only do we lose, but sometimes we stink,” Kinder said. “It’s the old Al Davis thing, ‘Just win, baby.’ “
Unsatisfied Stanford ticket buyers on a new season-ticket or family-plan program can get their money back with little hassle.
But don’t think this means you can go to the most anticipated home game essentially for free. Among the otherwise straightforward rules (go to the football page at gostanford.com for details) is this one:
— “Refund must be requested and tickets turned in before the USC game on Nov. 15.”
(E-mail Michelle Smith at msmithsfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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