ACC Schools Struggling To Sell Tix To Basketball Tourney

ACC Schools' Major Donors Taking Pass On This Season’s Hoops Tournament Tickets

The ’07 ACC men’s basketball tournament is taking place in Tampa March 8-11, and top donors at some schools “have declined tickets, sending organizers scurrying to previously unexplored depths of the rolls to find takers,” according to Rob Daniels of the Greensboro NEWS & RECORD. The St. Pete Times Forum is 3,000 seats smaller than the Greensboro Coliseum, where the tournament was held last year. Virginia Tech and Miami are now full members of the league and Boston College receives a two-thirds share of tickets, meaning long-time ACC schools “will be getting their smallest seat total since” ’89, approximately 1,700 tickets per team. But whether it is the fact that the tournament is being held “farther from the league’s geographic center than ever before” or the “perception that the event has been diluted by expansion, major contributors are taking a pass” on buying tickets. Duke’s fundraising arm, the Iron Dukes, waived its $10,000 minimum annual donation for tournament ticket eligibility and sent letters to donors near Tampa “informing them they could purchase tickets regardless of their previous contribution level.” Meanwhile, the ACC and local organizers are promoting a “buy-back” program in which ticket holders “can sell their seats for [Thursday] back to the Forum, which will re-sell them to the public online via a lottery” (Greensboro NEWS & RECORD, 2/23).