The Osceola is starting a mailbag series with FSU director of ticket sales Seminole Boosters VP of Stadium Development and Sales Strategy Mark Cameron in order to provide our readers with everything you want and need to know about the Doak Campbell Stadium project for 2025.

In this initial mailbag, I ask Mark the basic questions that come to my mind when thinking about the various seating options now available in Doak, my personal budget, as well as my seating preferences.

Hopefully, Mark’s answers to my questions will be of help to you. But our real goal is to elicit questions from you for Mark to answer. We want to hear about your specific experience, concerns you may have, and the experience you want for your family and friends moving forward.

Send your questions to jkutz@theosceola.com and to mcameron@fsu.edu and we will respond to you in a future mailbag article. We’re certain that your question, and Mark’s answer, will help others understand this project better. If you wish to remain anonymous, please let us know. Also, if you would like a phone call from Mark, please include your name and phone number in your email.

Our goal is to provide the FSU fan base with clear communication about this important project. We want to address all questions and concerns, or to share your excitement about what this project will do for Doak Campbell Stadium.

Let’s start with the basics. Why did FSU undertake the renovation?

There are many reasons, but the two biggest is we had so much feedback from donors for more seating experiences. The chairback seat provides people more comfort. It is fan-experience driven at the end of the day. We had so many people tell us, “I’d love to come to a game but I’m not doing a bleacher seat.”

The more our fans visited other stadiums across the country for bowl games in Atlanta, Dallas or Miami, the more uncomfortable our bleacher seats became to them and the more they began to ask for a variety of seating options, like the chairback and club seats. Improvements to our outdated concourses, restrooms, and concession stands were also a must for fans.

The second important reason is the west side project does generate revenue and became a funding mechanism for the Dunlap Football Center and other facility needs.

What’s the status of the construction for 2025.

Everything is on schedule and will be completed by the 2025 season. They are starting the process of removing the temporary seats on the west side as well as the Dunlap Champions seats in the south endzone.

Will you remove all of the Champions Club seats?

Yes. We are going to remove them all and replace them with mesh seats and chairback seating.

We also plan to remove all the name plates and send them to the club seat holders in the Spring.

What’s the status of the seating process?

The project has five phases. The first two phases, the Founders Suites and Loge Boxes, were completed two years ago. There were only eight suites and 28 loge boxes and they all sold out.

The third phase was the West Sideline Club, which we started last year and effectively sold out this summer. By effectively, I mean we held back a few until the final construction is complete and we are certain the actual seating project matches the architectural manifest.

The fourth phase we started this summer was the Dunlap Champions Club. We have 76 percent sold thus far and have concluded outreach to all current club seat holders. So what we are doing now is folding in the remaining available Dunlap Champions Club seats into our West Side chairback seat presentations.

The fifth and final phase is the West Side chairback seats, which we started selling this fall and are 17 percent sold currently. To date we’ve reached out to Tier 1 donors (Legacy and Platinum Chiefs) and Tier 2 (Golden and Silver Chiefs), who previously sat in the affected areas (sections 29-37) on the west side.

We are now moving through the Tomahawks and Warriors who previously were seated in those section in 2023, which is just over 2,200 season ticket holders. We’ve reached out to 1,000 of those 2,200 thus far and expect to get through all 2,200 by late January.

Are sales on target?

From a pacing standpoint we are on track and plan to accelerate our outreach to get through all current donors before our April 10 renewal deadline.

What are the benefits of the west side seating improvements?

The chairback seating itself is a large improvement. People think of a clip-on seat, but this is an actual mesh back, mesh bottom, 20-inch seat with cupholder. The armrests on each side also define the space as opposed to a bleacher seat that someone can infringe on. The tread depth is 33 inches, which gives you an extra six inches of leg room over the old stadium, which has a 27-inch tread.

The second benefit is new concourses, new restrooms, and brand-new concession stands with updated equipment. We’ll have a new field level club, but also new concourses on both levels of the west side for everyone. These will be well-lit and allow us to provide game day experiences that you would expect to find at a modern stadium.

Restrooms are new and built to modern code, so there are more fixtures per person. In 2023 we had 51 fixtures (toilets plus urinals) on the upper west side concourse, and we’ll now have 140. The women’s restroom fixture count has also increased.

If you have any questions, please send them to us and we will answer them in this new mailbag series.

What happens after you have exhausted outreach to the west side season ticket holders of record as of 2023?

We will have reached out to all of them by the end of January, so in February we will start to talk to all donors including those who had east side seats. We’ll go out in priority waves to all donors beginning then with the opportunity to buy in the west side seating area or in the Dunlap Champions Club (based on availability). Once again, we looked at west side 2023 seat holders who were most affected and contacted them first to provide them with the first priority to purchase the new seats. So a Warrior on the west side was offered the opportunity to purchase seats in the new west side even before a Golden Chief with seats on the east side.

Why did you prioritize the West Side Warrior over larger donors on the East side or high end donors who had no seats at all?

From Day 1 it was important to athletic director Michael Alford and our sales team that worked on this project to prioritize the people who were being most displaced, which were those on the west side. When you widen seats and aisles and increase tread depth, you have a lot of seat displacement. Ultimately, we wanted to be sure those people who were impacted on the west had the first opportunity to see the project and make their plans for seating before anyone else.

What has the reception been like?

The individual meetings almost always go well. When you can sit down with people individually and find out what their needs are, we can usually find a good fit.

With whom did you have the most issues?

Where we have had issues is with mass communication, or where a person heard something about the project from someone else. For example, a person with two seats in higher rows on the west side heard what the prices were for a person with four seats in the lower club section. They heard about a $60,000 capital gift plus the price of the seating. When they came in for their meeting for the chair-back seats, they were relieved to find out that their two seats were in what is now the chair-back seating and would be much, much less.

When you quote a price for the chair-back seats, is there a capital campaign gift required?

Yes, there is a capital gift tied to each new seat in the first five phases. The capital gift doesn’t cover all the construction costs but allows us to help fund the stadium enhancements. There is no capital gift tied to any of the bleacher seating, including the new west side bleachers in the corner end zones.

When you quote a price for the chairback seats, my understanding is the Booster contribution is included in the price. Can you give us an example?

That is correct. Over the last two years we’ve been implementing our Ticket Modernization process, which is looking at each reserved season ticket in each sport as a total annual cost of ticket plus Booster requirement. The sum of Booster requirements across all sports totals up to a donor’s Booster membership.

For example, if a donor was previously a Silver Chief ($3,250) with four bleacher seats ($350 each), then they paid $4,650 total. If they’re looking at a chairback seat that’s $1,500 per seat, $500 of that is the ticket cost and $1,000 is the Booster requirement. If they move forward with four chair-back seats then they would pay $6,000 annually with $4,000 of that cost going towards their Booster membership, keeping them at the Silver Chief level.

When will you seat the bleacher seats on the west side from the goal line to the back of the end zone?

Any bleacher seat will be selected in priority order during the May selection process, which will include west side bleacher seats as well as south and east.

Can you tell us how much those bleacher seats will be and whether there is a capital gift or Booster donation requirement?

Those seats will be $600 per seat total with $350 representing the ticket cost and $250 representing the Booster requirement. No capital gift will be required for bleacher seating. (Editor’s note: A person buying two seats would pay $1,200, with $700 going to tickets and $500 toward their Booster donor level. And they would enjoy the wider seat with more legroom and new concourses, concessions and restrooms.)

When will the seat selection process for the West Side Club, Chairback and Dunlap Champions Club seats.

We will hold the seat selection process for those new sections in March. All the new seat selection will be done in March and the bleacher seating and parking selection process will be in May.

Any unsold seats in the chairback section would be part of the May selection process.

How will parking work this year?

Everyone will select parking in May. Everyone will have to go into the online parking selection system and choose their parking lot. Like with seating, your timeslot to enter will be based on your priority.

Why is FSU requiring parking reassignment?

Because of the construction, we lost some parking permanently and some temporarily. In 2025, we will be back to a permanent parking situation so people will have to select their parking for 2025.

Will it remain a season parking pass?

Yes.

Will there be a cost for the parking pass?

Yes. It will be $100 per pass regardless of the lot.

The most important reason we moved to this model is to make sure our spaces are being utilized on game day. By charging for the pass people are more inclined to actually use the pass. In the past because it was issued for free, and many donors would take the pass but not use it, so there were a lot of empty spaces. Meanwhile donors who selected parking later in the process were assigned to lots further from the stadium and walked by many half-empty lots on their way into the stadium.

So, we think this will be a real benefit to those people who are actually going to use the parking passes by being able to choose a lot closer to the stadium. It also makes it more likely to serve all of our Renegade donors, some of whom were not able to select parking in 2024.

For on-going, timely updates on the project, please visit https://boosters.fsu.edu/doak/, where FSU will continue to update the latest timelines, news, and FAQ’s regarding the renovation.

The point of this Mailbag series is to communicate with you, so please send us your thoughts, questions and concerns to jkutz@theosceola.com and mcameron@fsu.edu and we will address them in a future Mailbag.

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