Maryland head coach Gary Williams and Terrapin fans everywhere have been waiting for their team to play the ACC Tournament in their own backyard for years.
The tradeoff for having a tournament close to home in Washington, D.C.’s MCI Center is that more fans who had hoped to cheer on the Terps—or any other league team—from arena seats will be watching the games from their living room couches instead.
In comparison to past ACC tournaments, the size of this year’s site is relatively small—there are more than 3,000 fewer seats available this year than last year. The recent addition of Miami and Virginia Tech to the conference further reduces the number of tickets available for each participating program to distribute to its supporters.
“Our people have known for a while now that tickets would be very, very tight,” said Joe Hull, senior associate director for external operations at Maryland. “Some people just aren’t going to go this year.”
In an attempt to maximize the capacity of the MCI Center, ACC commissioners added seating to every available square inch of the arena, Hull said. Even these efforts, however, could not provide an arrangement that measured up to last year’s tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Maryland and the eight other pre-expansion schools each received 1,941 tickets to be made available for purchase, about 400 fewer than each had last year. Newcomers Miami and Virginia Tech were allotted 647 tickets apiece, a third of the number given to the other schools. All programs will have 100 additional seats behind the bench for games in which their teams are playing.
The ACC is traditionally home to some of the strongest basketball programs in the country, and tickets to the tournament have not been sold to the public since 1966. This year’s reduction made distribution especially difficult for the programs that will play close to home.
“We got hit on all three fronts,” Hull said. “The size [of the stadium], the expansion, the location—it was harder than usual.”
The placement this year provided North Carolina-based programs, which have played the tournament in their home state nine times in the past 10 years, with a change of pace as well. Because of the distant venue, some Blue Devil fans were reluctant to travel to the tournament, and several declined to purchase tickets when given the opportunity. Still, the demand for tickets greatly surpassed the number that distribution groups like the Iron Dukes, the fundraising organization for Duke athletics, had available.
“That has had an impact on our demand,” Jack Winters, executive director of the Iron Dukes, said of playing outside North Carolina. “But there’s no doubt that the loss of tickets has had the biggest impact.”
To even have a chance to purchase the $325 tickets, Iron Dukes must contribute at least $10,000 a year. The Athletic Department also distributes tickets to students, staff, administration and players’ families.
In years to come, the further expansion of the ACC will leave programs with even fewer tickets to distribute when the tournament is played at smaller pre-selected sites.
“In 2008 we’ll be playing in the new Charlotte Coliseum,” said John Cherry, associate executive director of the Rams Club at North Carolina. “That’ll be the year you’ll really hear the squawking.”
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