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Season tickets - chrisk - 02-27-2018

Anybody have any hints at what the football season ticket plans will look like when they finally get around to announcing them?  They are already almost a month behind last year (I assume due to the new tax law).


Re: Season tickets - Snorlax94 - 02-27-2018

Some discussion here:
thecardboard.org/board/index.php?topic=18633.0

But to your specific question, I haven’t heard anything yet about what the plans will look like.



Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 02-27-2018

email exchange with the ticket office on when to expect football season ticket renewals to start


>>  We expect FB renewals to begin in mid-March.

Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 03-06-2018

email from the AD today

Save the date and get ready to rejoin Stanford football! Additional information will be shared and you can renew your 2018 Season Ticket Membership beginning Tuesday, March 20. Don't miss out on a minute of action at Stanford Stadium with the Cardinal this fall.

Re: Season tickets - CompSci87 - 03-07-2018

"Save the date"? Is the ticket office telling us it will take all day to renew our tickets?  ::)

Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 03-07-2018

(03-07-2018, 12:03 AM)CompSci87 link Wrote:"Save the date"? Is the ticket office telling us it will take all day to renew our tickets?  ::)

well if you have premium seats you may be advised to talk to your "tax professional" about the best way to renew.......

Re: Season tickets - Treebound - 03-07-2018

(03-07-2018, 08:53 AM)eric link Wrote:[quote author=CompSci87 link=topic=18803.msg225465#msg225465 date=1520406234]
"Save the date"? Is the ticket office telling us it will take all day to renew our tickets?  ::)

well if you have premium seats you may be advised to talk to your "tax professional" about the best way to renew.......
[/quote]

Wish to renew?
No tax benefit for you!
The new tax deal did screw,
both me and likely you... :P


Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 03-07-2018

(03-07-2018, 06:46 PM)Treebound link Wrote:[quote author=eric link=topic=18803.msg225467#msg225467 date=1520437986]
[quote author=CompSci87 link=topic=18803.msg225465#msg225465 date=1520406234]
"Save the date"? Is the ticket office telling us it will take all day to renew our tickets?  ::)

well if you have premium seats you may be advised to talk to your "tax professional" about the best way to renew.......
[/quote]

Wish to renew?
No tax benefit for you!
The new tax deal did screw,
both me and likely you... :P
[/quote]

I wonder what places like Michigan or Alabama are doing about the tax situation, they have a lot more premium seat required donations on the line than Stanford does......

ADD, what Michigan says

Greetings from Ann Arbor.

Thank you for your generous support as a donor and season ticket holder. I would like to update you on the Preferred Seat Donation program as it relates to the recently signed tax legislation. As you may be aware, one of the impacted areas of the new tax bill is the ability to deduct charitable contributions associated with the purchase of season tickets. Effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2018, donations associated with the purchase of tickets will no longer be tax deductible.

The Preferred Seat Donation program will continue for all football season ticket holders and for designated areas for men’s basketball and ice hockey for the 2018-19 seasons.

....

If you have not yet made your Preferred Seat Donation and wish to do so again this year, you may do so at mgoblue.com/psd. You will receive a gift receipt for 80 percent of the donation amount provided it is complete by December 31, 2017. Beginning January 1, 2018, Preferred Seat Donations will no longer receive a tax receipt.

http://support.mgoblue.com/annual-giving/preferred-seat-donation/


Re: Season tickets - Treebound - 03-08-2018

Thanks for the add Eric.  Alabama, Michigan, ND and others will do as your UofM note suggests and require the same donation which will not be tax deductible.    They have the demand and their fans/alumni will eat the cost if they want to keep their seats.

Stanford, as has been the case in many of these types of questions, will likely soften that approach - hence the delay in the pricing roll-out.  Our alumni base tends to be less tolerant of these types of pricing/cost changes - some might even say "entitled."  The potential to charge for parking around the stadium was looked at for many years and the reaction of some, when the AD did start to charge was quite vocal.  The AD has to pay the parking vendors and security and lighting, etc... What does parking cost for the other sporting events here in the Bay Area?  We have the best tailgating/parking in the area, but how dare you charge me a fair price for it - were some of the comments that I have heard. 

Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 03-08-2018

I'm not a tax person so what I write below could be complete nonsense

it would seem one solution to tax deductibility of the "required" donations could be

1.  have no required donations
2.  re-seat the stadium every 3-5 years based on "engagement with the University" using criteria similar to what they use for bowl game tickets

- years as a STH
- alum
- former student athlete
- donations to Stanford
- donations to the AD
- etc

this might keep the donations deductible but creates a potential mess every 3-5 years when they re-seat, of course they could take a minimalist look at re-seating and only move people who significantly miss on the expected "level of engagement" for their seat locations

of course this might not sufficiently de-couple the donations from the seats (or would it make general donations to Stanford also not tax deductible since they would be at least indirectly linked to seats).

I would expect that Stanford, and everyone else who has required seat donations, to have worked hard to get donations in my the end of 2017 to keep the deduction for as many premium ticket buyers as possible.

Re: Season tickets - pcgoode - 03-08-2018

I live in Canada, and we have a tax credit system for donations to universities and other institutions and causes.  For donations to universities outside of Canada, the institution needs to be listed in government schedules to qualify, and Stanford is on these schedules (as would most if not all major US universities I would think).  I am wondering if they will issue me a tax receipt for this given my residence.  I sent the powers that be a note today asking about this.

Re: Season tickets - Snorlax94 - 03-08-2018

(03-08-2018, 12:05 PM)eric link Wrote:I'm not a tax person so what I write below could be complete nonsense

it would seem one solution to tax deductibility of the "required" donations could be

1.  have no required donations
2.  re-seat the stadium every 3-5 years based on "engagement with the University" using criteria similar to what they use for bowl game tickets

My concerns with occasional re-seating center around the social aspect of keeping your seats and the uncertainty of using an engagement level.

1) I feel very fortunate in that I have gotten to know the season tickets around me -- largely because one of them takes a community leader role. Each season, I look forward to seeing my seats mates around me. If I felt like I was going to lose my community every 3-5 years, and maybe like my new section, maybe not, I would be far, far less likely to renew every time a re-seating rolled around. And there would be no reason to renew during a Buddy-Ball type of era.

Second, and maybe this is some people, but I am a shopper who very much values transparency in pricing. If I am looking for a service online, and some sites list their prices, and others tell me to request a quote, for the most part, I'm going to walk away from the places without visible prices. Alums with kids might donate for years because maybe it will help their children get in, maybe not, but I don't think alums will donate to the AD for 5 years hoping that 5 years later, maybe their stadium seats will get better, maybe they will get worse.

It is like rain on your wedding day that Stanford finally gets around to implementing preferred seat donations after so many years of not doing it, and then within the same year, the deduction is suddenly taken away. I empathize that this is a difficult problem. I think it's actually under-covered in the sports world, because I imagine that over the course of 2-5 years, this will be the biggest game-changer in college football in many years.

Re: Season tickets - Phogge - 03-08-2018

I sit in Upper 234, 35 yard line. No donation. Most games plenty of seats available. If donations required in the future I will opt out. There are other ways to get into the stadium.

Re: Season tickets - 82lsju - 03-08-2018

(03-08-2018, 02:15 PM)Snorlax94 link Wrote:My concerns with occasional re-seating center around the social aspect of keeping your seats and the uncertainty of using an engagement level.

I agree

We have a group of 12 who have sat together for a long time (the core group since 1982) as season ticket holders and the social aspects of game day are more important to some of our group than the games.  During the Walt/Buddy years we had people who kept their tickets but seldom went in, they often stayed out at the tailgater all game. 

We went through the "engagement level" vs sitting together question when we moved into the new stadium and decided to sit together.  We have a wide range of "engagement levels" with the University and our group got the "engagement level" of the least engaged member (we have 4 actual season ticket buyers for the 12 seats).  We initially had seats in the upper bowl.  We moved to the lower bowl when the team switched sidelines and they moved the students out of 134 and we asked to be moved in and were granted our request.

At the end of the day we would again choose sitting together over splitting up as I'm certain that some of the group would not pay a required donation even if it was deductible. 

While we're currently on the sunny side with no seat premium I had previously thought they would come after at least sections 134 (our current location) and 132 with a required donation starting with the 2019 season, and that if they did I expected we'd get moved to worse seats, given the changes we'll see if this change happens in 2019.....

Re: Season tickets - Goose - 03-09-2018

If the "donation" is not tax-deductable, why not man up and just raise the prices? This "donation" thing was a dodge to begin with, so now, no dodge, straight up, raise the price. It is just the truth.

Re: Season tickets - chrisk - 03-09-2018

Raising the ticket prices by the full amount of the "donation" would have the potential to create a different questionable dodge.
If you donated the seats and were able to take the face value as a donation, it would be an even bigger tax deduction than the current deduction.
Of course, you wouldn't be able to use the ticket. but you could pick up another ticket for a fraction of the "face value"

The brobdingnagian discrepancy between face value and fair market value would not pass IRS scrutiny.  There has to be a reasonable relation between the donation value and the fair market value.

Re: Season tickets - Snorlax94 - 03-19-2018

(03-06-2018, 06:38 PM)eric link Wrote:email from the AD today

Save the date and get ready to rejoin Stanford football! Additional information will be shared and you can renew your 2018 Season Ticket Membership beginning Tuesday, March 20. Don't miss out on a minute of action at Stanford Stadium with the Cardinal this fall.
When I read the AD's email, I thought they made a grammatical error, or at least accidentally left something ambiguous. When they said "Additional information will be shared and you can renew... beginning Tuesday, March 20," I thought, **surely** they meant "beginning Tuesday March 20" applied only to the renewal sales, and that the additional information would be coming sooner.

But here we are at March 19 and no additional information  so far.

Anyone have word on whether things are on schedule?

Being curious, I tried to look up football season ticket information for Michigan, Alabama, Texas A&M, Notre Dame, Washington, SC and UCLA for a sampling. At Michigan, the link is simply non-operational. Alabama has all its information up including ticket and donation amounts. Texas A&M and Washington accept renewal deposits, but offers no additional details. SC has an odd system where you pay for end-zone tickets, then find out what seats you got (and presumably, pay more to upgrade) in May. And ND and UCLA asks you to fill out an interest form and they will follow up.

So, of those 7, only Alabama has announced pricing details, and they require PSDs.

Re: Season tickets - Snorlax94 - 03-19-2018

Update! I just received my renewal information via a personalized invoice.

I sit just outside of the PSD section, and as I expected, the seats cost the exact same as 2017. No breakdown, no details (I am eligible for renewal and non-young alumni discounts), just my amount per seat. Parking (cardinal lots) also the same.

More interesting to see what happens to people inside the PSD sections.

Also, no mention of early renewal prizes. Bummer — I won one of the small prizes last year!

Re: Season tickets - chrisk - 03-20-2018

You expect an early renewal prize for renewing a month later than last year?

Have heard that some / all of the donation amounts have been reduced.  Anybody here with details?

Re: Season tickets - BigEasyCard - 03-20-2018

My seats in Section 234 are same price as last year.  Looking forward to September 8.

Geaux Cardinal!