For those who want big events at The Beav

[UncleLar]

The athletic department ran this event, correct? They did it in conjunction with an outside agency who was probably mostly responsible for procuring the talent and providing guidance. What concert events have the athletic department run before? Remember, the concerts at the BJC are not run by the athletic department. They don't own, nor even run, that facility. I'm sure they were able to draw on some of that expertise, although those employees don't work for athletics, but you're talking apples and oranges. The BJC was built for concerts. The infrastructure needed for lighting, power for sound, stages, seating, dressing rooms, etc. are all in place, along with a set of procedures for organizing it, handling the talent, etc. None of that was at the stadium, and the employees that run the BJC are presumedly well versed in doing things at that facility, but not necessarily in other facilities, especially ones not built to hold major concerts, let alone having ever hosted a single concert. There were probably costs incurred this time around that won't have to be incurred in the future if they do it again.

I'm sure their profit target was don't lose any money. How's that? I have no doubt athletics wanted to make money on the event. But I doubt they budgeted for it, or were considering it a source of revenue this year that they were counting on.

If Sandy hired consultants to study the feasibility of holding concerts in the stadium, you'd probably be complaining about that expenditure. So this was a real life expenditure to gather the same knowledge, with ticket sales to offset it.

I can't imagine the business you run if you never venture out and try new things, take risks, or do anything that you don't have down 97-98% before you attempt it.

You don't run something like this yourself, you hire someone. In Penn State's case, they hired Basis Entertainment (actually, a more accurate description of the deal probably would be that Basis Entertainment paid PSU a fee to rent the stadium). Basis would have handled most of the effort not PSU.

 

[manatree]

Whine if they do, moan if they don't, fire Sandy either way.

 

[Art]

Andy McNitt, you know the guy who runs Penn State's program has a word for you art when it comes to this subject. He says you are an idiot. Call him up and ask him. I dare ya.

Gee, I don't recall saying that the re-sodding won't work. Who heads the remedial reading program at PSU?

 

[psuro]

That's a pretty neat trick.

Timing Art. It's all about timing.

 

[LoyalandTrueLion]

Gee, I don't recall saying that the re-sodding won't work. Who heads the remedial reading program at PSU?

You should take the class old man cuz my comment is in direct response to your comment about Heinz field.

So again I dare you to call McNitt and ask him about Heinz field. Ask about the Link as well.

 

[Art]

You should take the class old man cuz my comment is in direct response to your comment about Heinz field.

So again I dare you to call McNitt and ask him about Heinz field. Ask about the Link as well.

Wow, a dare!

 

[MilesBarkley]

Obviously they had problems. But... did the lateness of the tickets prevent you from going to the game? Did the lateness of the tickets detract from your enjoyment of the game? Did the lateness of receiving the tickets ruin the season for you? Let's keep it in perspective.

Yeah actually it did, as I live in Michigan and now the tickets need to get to my brother in Philly area by tomorrow. So to answer your question, yes it did play an impact of getting tickets distributed to my family.

 

[MilesBarkley]

It sounds like you got your tickets 3 days before they were needed, so what's the problem?

I got my tickets yesterday, yes. But I live in Michigan. The game is in University Park, PA. The tickets are going to my brothers house in Philly to go to the game. So yes, it did cause a problem.

 

[Sproul]

Yeah actually it did, as I live in Michigan and now the tickets need to get to my brother in Philly area by tomorrow. So to answer your question, yes it did play an impact of getting tickets distributed to my family.

So ya log in to ticketmaster and email them to him, could have done that a month ago. If they want the paper tickets as a souvenir, mail them to him afterwords. Penn State screwed up royally, but it isn't stopping anyone from getting into the game if they have a printer.

 

[LionJim]

Great photo of an amazing venue. That shot would bring tears to LionJim's eyes.

 

[artsandletters]

That's just as I imagined you looked like - except with glasses.

 

[PSUSignore]

So ya log in to ticketmaster and email them to him, could have done that a month ago. If they want the paper tickets as a souvenir, mail them to him afterwords. Penn State screwed up royally, but it isn't stopping anyone from getting into the game if they have a printer.

Bingo. I don't even get tickets and I've known that they can be printed from your Ticketmaster account for weeks. This topic has been beaten to death in every PSU forum I read and it's a minor inconvenience that's easily solved by electronic transfers or just printing tickets yourself. Demanding that tickets arrive in June or July when they aren't needed until September is just silly, as long as they arrive before the game happens PSU has done it's job. They likely want to minimize how early they send them out anyway, to help cut down on the amount of time the scam artists have to produce fake replicas. Many events do this. For example I go to a music festival every year where I pay for my tickets in November and I don't receive my tickets in the mail until the following September, about 2 weeks before the event.

The only bigger risk is for parking passes which can't be printed. If there is a circumstance where those don't arrive before someone leaves home, I'd suggest calling PSU to see if they can mail it to an alternate address, arrange for a pickup in person, or send you something electronically that can be printed once you arrive. Since you've already paid PSU has no choice but to make some sort of special arrangements in those cases. I think the bigger risk will be the parking lot attendants being aware of whatever special parking pass arrangements have been made and making sure they don't turn people away at the lots on game day.

I know all of this without even being a ticket holder, so surely this information is readily accessible for any ticket holders that spend 5 minutes to research their options and read the internet.

 

[LoyalandTrueLion]

Wow, a dare!

View embedded media

ok art. thanks. just like barron put your hand ups

 

[Art]

ok art. thanks. just like barron put your hand ups

It's grass, jackass, who gives a shit?

 

[LoyalandTrueLion]

It's grass, jackass, who gives a shit?

obviously you, since you have more posts in this thread than me. you stated it takes 2-6 weeks yada yada yada and then went on and took a shot at the people who the field in Pittsburgh. the man who both advises the people who take care of the fields in Pittsburgh knows they do a great job and are some of the best people in the business. so you don't know the topic but you chimed in anyway as an expert. I pointed out that you should contact mcnitt, since he is the "guy" at Penn State. then like a child you took a shot at me, and then another.

very mature

 

[BlueBand]

I am not sure who rutgersal is, but I will borrow the phrase from an earlier poster to describe your response:"Wow, just ****ing wow."

How about - for starters - another $200,000 of wasted funds (to try to clean up PSU ICA's incompetent mess) extracted from the Boosters? I know that may not seem like a lot, on top of the $18,000,000 already being charged, but some people consider $200,000 real money - and wasting an additional $200,000 through utter incompetence, on a project that even in the best case yields no benefit to the customer, as a teeny bit of a problem.

One might also consider who much time, effort, and money thousands of Penn State Customers wasted trying to track down and figure out what was going on with regard to the product they purchased. One might want to consider that many - probably not a high percentage, but certainly more than a few - of those customers have experienced, or continue to experience very significant inconvenience.
I know everyone can relate an anecdote, but I personally have heard from several fans who have situations - such as people who live out of the area, but travel to the State College area several days or even a week or two before the games - who still have no idea when or where there Tickets or Parking passes may show up. Or customers who had plans to send their Tickets and Passes to friends or family members for the game, since they had not planned on using the Akron tickets themselves over Labor Day weekend, who are scrambling around trying to invent ways to get the ducats to the proper people.
None of which takes place if not for a stunning show of incompetence by the Penn State ICA Administration.

But if you want to excuse overlook the failures of those people who are responsible for these self-inflicted and completely unnecessary and very expensive foul-ups, more power to you.

.

I'm not overlooking any failures. They screwed up, the printer screwed up, they admitted it. As others have pointed out, there are ways to print the tickets yourself, or transfer them electronically. If anything, I'd say they didn't do a good enough job communicating that, making everyone focus on the tickets being mailed. But in the scheme of things, if this is all you've got to bitch about, consider yourself lucky.

BTW, people really go up two weeks before the game? If they have the luxury of being able to do that, I'm sure they have time and access to these alternate means of getting their tickets.

 

[PSUSignore]

I'm not overlooking any failures. They screwed up, the printer screwed up, they admitted it. As others have pointed out, there are ways to print the tickets yourself, or transfer them electronically. If anything, I'd say they didn't do a good enough job communicating that, making everyone focus on the tickets being mailed. But in the scheme of things, if this is all you've got to bitch about, consider yourself lucky.

BTW, people really go up two weeks before the game? If they have the luxury of being able to do that, I'm sure they have time and access to these alternate means of getting their tickets.

They might not travel to PSU 2 weeks early, but might have other travel plans that include a stop at PSU before returning back home. If so, they'd need the tickets to arrive earlier and if past years set the precedence that the tickets will arrive in June, they probably wouldn't hesitate to book such plans. With the electronic options, this isn't really an issue anymore.

 

[Art]

obviously you, since you have more posts in this thread than me. you stated it takes 2-6 weeks yada yada yada and then went on and took a shot at the people who the field in Pittsburgh. the man who both advises the people who take care of the fields in Pittsburgh knows they do a great job and are some of the best people in the business. so you don't know the topic but you chimed in anyway as an expert. I pointed out that you should contact mcnitt, since he is the "guy" at Penn State. then like a child you took a shot at me, and then another.

very mature

Why don't you pull the sod that's growing out of both your ears and shove it up your ass? At least there it would serve some useful purpose.

 

[BlueBand]

Do you consider taking $200,000 of a customer's money and flushing it down the toilet to be a productive day's work?

I don't

Apparently, you do - since you continue to ignore that little peccadillo .
If so, then congratulations. You have a rewarding career as a Penn State Administrator in your future.

It's not your money. Once you gave it to them, it became their money. In return, they provide you with entertainment.

And to put it in perspective... if there are, say, 50,000 season ticket holders, that's $4 per ticket.

Again, it's at best an inconvenience for a minority of ticket holders. And their communication could have been better. They've acknowledged and taken responsibility for it. Not that it should be seen as acceptable, but sometimes shit happens. IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS (which you apparently have trouble grasping), this is not a big deal for most people.

 

[PSUSignore]

It's not your money. Once you gave it to them, it became their money. In return, they provide you with entertainment.

And to put it in perspective... if there are, say, 50,000 season ticket holders, that's $4 per ticket.

Again, it's at best an inconvenience for a minority of ticket holders. And their communication could have been better. They've acknowledged and taken responsibility for it. Not that it should be seen as acceptable, but sometimes shit happens. IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS (which you apparently have trouble grasping), this is not a big deal for most people.

I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal for most. The PSU football social media groups I belong to seem to disagree however, based on the hundreds of posts I've seen about it. I'm over it tbh, people are overreacting and I've basically lost sympathy for them.

 

[Art]

I am not sure who rutgersal is, but I will borrow the phrase from an earlier poster to describe your response:"Wow, just ****ing wow."

How about - for starters - another $200,000 of wasted funds (to try to clean up PSU ICA's incompetent mess) extracted from the Boosters? I know that may not seem like a lot, on top of the $18,000,000 already being charged, but some people consider $200,000 real money - and wasting an additional $200,000 through utter incompetence, on a project that even in the best case yields no benefit to the customer, as a teeny bit of a problem.

One might also consider who much time, effort, and money thousands of Penn State Customers wasted trying to track down and figure out what was going on with regard to the product they purchased. One might want to consider that many - probably not a high percentage, but certainly more than a few - of those customers have experienced, or continue to experience very significant inconvenience.
I know everyone can relate an anecdote, but I personally have heard from several fans who have situations - such as people who live out of the area, but travel to the State College area several days or even a week or two before the games - who still have no idea when or where there Tickets or Parking passes may show up. Or customers who had plans to send their Tickets and Passes to friends or family members for the game, since they had not planned on using the Akron tickets themselves over Labor Day weekend, who are scrambling around trying to invent ways to get the ducats to the proper people.
None of which takes place if not for a stunning show of incompetence by the Penn State ICA Administration.

But if you want to excuse overlook the failures of those people who are responsible for these self-inflicted and completely unnecessary and very expensive foul-ups, more power to you.

.

I missed something. What's this $200k?

 

[LoyalandTrueLion]

Why don't you pull the sod that's growing out of both your ears and shove it up your ass? At least there it would serve some useful purpose.

You can do that for me on Saturday internet tough guy. Come down to the field and just give me a yell. A few more posts for one who doesn't care. Seems odd

 

[Art]

Costs incurred in trying to priority ship delayed ticket booklets.
Probably a bit understated, as it doesn't include internal man-hour costs.

Wow! For those that don't think that $200k is a big deal, my company employees considerably fewer people than PSU ICA. In a bad year, we make a shitload more money than ICA does. If we incurred that sort of cost as the result of something that was entirely avoidable by an adequate level of care or diligence, the person responsible would either have it deducted from his or her bonus or be fired.

 

[BlueBand]

Wow! For those that don't think that $200k is a big deal, my company employees considerably fewer people than PSU ICA. In a bad year, we make a shitload more money than ICA does. If we incurred that sort of cost as the result of something that was entirely avoidable by an adequate level of care or diligence, the person responsible would either have it deducted from his or her bonus or be fired.

Except if it happens at your company, I doubt you have a bunch of people who don't work there throwing a hissy fit over it.

Guess what? They'd be throwing a bigger fit if ICA didn't spend the money to get the tickets out when they did.

They screwed up. They admitted it. They said it won't happen again. It cost them money to make it better and get the tickets out. Everyone got their tickets. There were electronic options for those who needed them earlier. I'm sure it's being handled internally as regards to who screwed up, any "punishment," etc. But apparently we have people who insist beating a dead horse... I guess they need something to complain about.

 

[ThePennsyOracle]

Do you consider taking $200,000 of a customer's money and flushing it down the toilet to be a productive day's work?

I don't

Apparently, you do - since you continue to ignore that little peccadillo .
If so, then congratulations. You have a rewarding career as a Penn State Administrator in your future.

Barry, is that you?

 

[BlueBand]

Barry, is that you?

I thought the same thing, but while the themes are the same, it just didn't sound the same. Maybe not enough condescension.

 

[Art]

Except if it happens at your company, I doubt you have a bunch of people who don't work there throwing a hissy fit over it.

Guess what? They'd be throwing a bigger fit if ICA didn't spend the money to get the tickets out when they did.

They screwed up. They admitted it. They said it won't happen again. It cost them money to make it better and get the tickets out. Everyone got their tickets. There were electronic options for those who needed them earlier. I'm sure it's being handled internally as regards to who screwed up, any "punishment," etc. But apparently we have people who insist beating a dead horse... I guess they need something to complain about.

One of the reasons we are as successful as we are is that we are dead serious about transparency and accountability. We believe out investors value that. So while we don't play before an audience nearly as large as that of PSU's Athletic Department, ours is decidedly more demanding. Thus, if we attempted to pass on to them a charge that was caused by our error or lack of diligence, what we'd here is far more than a "hissy fit." And, of course, our investors would expect us to spend whatever necessary to fix the problem and would be all over us if we didn't. But that money would come out of our pocket(s), not theirs. Of course, we don't publicly air our dirty linen, but the ultimate pocket belongs to the person responsible for the problem. Apologies alone are insufficient. Alternatives don't compensate for not delivering what we promised to deliver when we promised to deliver it.

 

[BlueBand]

One of the reasons we are as successful as we are is that we are dead serious about transparency and accountability. We believe out investors value that. So while we don't play before an audience nearly as large as that of PSU's Athletic Department, ours is decidedly more demanding. Thus, if we attempted to pass on to them a charge that was caused by our error or lack of diligence, what we'd here is far more than a "hissy fit." And, of course, our investors would expect us to spend whatever necessary to fix the problem and would be all over us if we didn't. But that money would come out of our pocket(s), not theirs. Of course, we don't publicly air our dirty linen, but the ultimate pocket belongs to the person responsible for the problem. Apologies alone are insufficient. Alternatives don't compensate for not delivering what we promised to deliver when we promised to deliver it.

And did the athletic department somehow charge ticket holders extra to cover the $200K, or did it come out of their pockets? I fail to see the difference.

PSU's investors (fans) expected them to spend what was necessary to fix the problem, and they did. So the difference is?

PSU isn't airing their dirty laundry in public, beyond admitting the mistake--accountability. So the difference is?

The "tricky" part is PSU's investors and customers are primarily the same people. Which makes their situation perhaps more difficult.

 

[interrobang]

First it was $120k, now it's $200k? I'll bet the number isn't even six figures.

 

[Art]

And did the athletic department somehow charge ticket holders extra to cover the $200K, or did it come out of their pockets? I fail to see the difference.

PSU's investors (fans) expected them to spend what was necessary to fix the problem, and they did. So the difference is?

PSU isn't airing their dirty laundry in public, beyond admitting the mistake--accountability. So the difference is?

The "tricky" part is PSU's investors and customers are primarily the same people. Which makes their situation perhaps more difficult.

Except that there are stakeholders in PSU Athletics other than ticket holders, most obviously the athletes themselves. So the $200k blown on the ticket distribution fiasco is $200k that won't go into improved nutritional programs, facilities maintenance or upgrades, or other services that would benefit athletes.

Admitting and apologizing for a screw up of this magnitude isn't accountability, particularly when its done by the amorphous "we." Accountability demands that either that money is replenished by those responsible or a head is offered up. Either one will do.