Mondays with Bobby, featuring Mitchell Henry

Spoke with Western Kentucky athletic director Todd Stewart on Wednesday about the Hilltoppers’ opening football game against Kentucky – and also season ticket sales for this season.

“The game two years ago we – us, UK and ticketmaster – we sold about 12,000 tickets. We ended up distributing about 23,000 and that included the complimentary tickets for both sides, students, the band – things like that. This year, right now, we’ve sold about 30,000.

“The number is good and what my hope is, it’s gone well and it’s been pretty steady over the last two weeks and hopefully if it continues at that rate for the next week-and-a-half, we can end up selling well into the 30s and then when you factor in the comps and the students and the bands, we could end up having a crowd of well over 40(K). Then if it goes even better than what we think over that period, we could end up having a crowd the mid to upper 40s, maybe even shoot for 50(K).

“But the facts as they are right now is we’ve sold right around 30,000.”

“(For season tickets) we’re at about 8,300 right now. The only year we had where it’s been more is 2008 where we had 8,600. Full disclosure, it’s a real number, but it’s somewhat inflated because 1,000 of those were corporate assistance we got from one-time season ticket purchases for $25. The 8,600 is a real number, but there’s sort of an asterisk with a 1,000 in there that were one-time only.

“I’m really confident by the Morgan State game we’ll greatly exceed that.

“The season-ticket package this season is only five games instead of six and we did raise prices. It’s one less game at a little higher price. I don’t really get caught up in the season-ticket number. It’s an important number, but to me the number is 22,113. How often do we get to that number and exceed that number? Season-ticket number is big, but we can sell 15,000 season tickets and if we didn’t sell any single game, we’d still have a stadium that’s over 25 percent empty. If we sell 9,000 season tickets, but we end up having 20 or 22,000 at game, that would be a better scenario.”

The game, scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 31, will be the second matchup between the two teams in Nashville. The first came in 2011 when kickoff was at 8:15 p.m. on a Thursday night – and only 24,599 fans showed up to the 68,798-seat venue. Last year in Lexington, attendance was 53,980 at Commonwealth Stadium. In 2010, 66,584 fans attended the game at UK and 70,731 witnessed the contest in 2008 in Lexington.

The event has it’s own ticket sales site on ticketmaster.com where 43 sections are still termed as, “many available.” There are 29 other sections in which tickets remain available and 53 sections are sold out. The first 4,000 WKU students attending the game get in free with a valid WKU student identification and UK’s student ticket allotment of 1,000 tickets at $10 each have sold out.

The Hilltoppers and Wildcats do not currently have any public plans to renew the series in the immediate future. Western Kentucky has four nonconference games for the 2014 season – including a game at Illinois – and is scheduled to play at LSU in 2015 and against Vanderbilt from 2015-2017.

The Hilltoppers don’t play at Houchens-Smith Stadium until Sept. 21 when they host Morgan State out of the Football Championship Subdivision. The home schedule also includes Navy, 40-14 winners at WKU in 2011, a pivotal Sun Belt Conference game against Louisiana-Lafayette on Tuesday, Oct. 15, a homecoming game against Troy on Oct. 26 and the regular season finale Nov. 30 against two-time defending SBC champions Arkansas State.

Filed under: Talkin’ bout the Tops