[Farm93]

The Stanford AD does have a few control groups it can study.

Maples - The attendance looks bad, but hard to isolate the attendance from the product on the court.
A few dozen other D1 schools - These schools revenue models are not big secrets.  These ADs talk all of the time and even have conferences on things like compliance and revenue generation.  I am not that worried about it, but I suspect one could go and attend the next NACDA conference and learn all about the risks and benefits associated with adopting a mandatory donation model. 

One could argue it the big donor class might not have the same program passion and love for the athletes.  And yet our loyal local supporters are often in their 70s and 80s, so I am not sure they jump up and scream throughout the game.

No doubt this was implemented in an odd year on purpose.  Lots of business and psychology work has been done on consumer behavior and this 2017 home schedule is ideal for this type of pricing increase.

FWIW - there is another reason for donations over ticket prices beyond the federal subsidy angle.  In the Pac-12 the visitor gets a large percentage (used to be 50%) of the ticket revenue, but 0% of the donations. 

[Farm93]

The Stanford AD does have a few control groups it can study.

Maples - The attendance looks bad, but hard to isolate the attendance from the product on the court.
A few dozen other D1 schools - These schools revenue models are not big secrets.  These ADs talk all of the time and even have conferences on things like compliance and revenue generation.  I am not that worried about it, but I suspect one could go and attend the next NACDA conference and learn all about the risks and benefits associated with adopting a mandatory donation model. 

One could argue it the big donor class might not have the same program passion and love for the athletes.  And yet our loyal local supporters are often in their 70s and 80s, so I am not sure they jump up and scream throughout the game.

No doubt this was implemented in an odd year on purpose.  Lots of business and psychology work has been done on consumer behavior and this 2017 home schedule is ideal for this type of pricing increase.

FWIW - there is another reason for donations over ticket prices beyond the federal subsidy angle.  In the Pac-12 the visitor gets a large percentage (used to be 50%) of the ticket revenue, but 0% of the donations.