UH abandons plan to close upper deck

The University of Hawaii expects to shelve plans to close the upper deck at Aloha Stadium this football season and will instead look at ways to give current season ticket holders more value in 2014, officials said.

Since closure would displace approximately 1,100 season-ticket holders who account for 3,225 seats, athletic director Ben Jay said Tuesday, "It doesn’t look like I’m going to (lean) to closing the upper deck."

UH sold 18,354 season tickets in 2013, its fewest in seven years, and faces an uphill task on renewals after a 1-11 season.

Jay said, "I think where we’re headed is keeping it the same (prices) for the current season-ticket holders who plan to renew and, for any new purchasers, they might pay a new price."

In December, Jay had told the UH Board of Regents he was in conversations with Aloha Stadium about reducing overhead at football games and was "seriously" considering closing down the upper levels at the facility to save money, create more of a home-field crowd and provide a better TV backdrop.

The Rainbow Warriors attracted an average of 26,637 through the turnstiles in 2013 at the 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium and haven’t surpassed 35,000 for a game in any of the past three seasons.

The areas Jay was said to have been considering took in about 15,000 seats. The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl saved approximately $5,000 by closing a smaller amount of some of the same sections at its Christmas Eve game.

"I think what we are going to do is take a look at our (existing) pricing models and try to adjust to make sure we take care of our ticket holders," Jay said. "The overall goal is to make sure we’re valuing the season-ticket holder. Those folks ought to be protected and that’s what our ticketing team is looking at right now. I think they will be pleased with it.

"There’s a lot of imbalance in the stadium (pricing) that never made sense to me and we’re going to look at that."