The Southeast Missouri State University Redhawks are playing the Southern Illinois University Salukis this Saturday for the very first football game played in the new Busch Stadium.
Southeast Athletic Director Mark Alnutt anticipates about 12,000 tickets sold. The weather forecast for Saturday is good and he expects a lot of tickets will be sold at the door. The game has been marketed on Facebook and Twitter, at booths at Busch Stadium and during Cardinals baseball broadcasts within the past few weeks.
“It’s about a quarter of a million dollar cost to play the game and that's a combination of rental fee for the facility, a cost for the marketing aspect of this which is what we are getting out of it far exceeded so that was a 40,000 dollar cost,” Alnutt said.
The college body, youth groups, locals and thousands of Southeast alumni are expected at the game. Alnutt said the game is a great way to increase the university’s exposure. He hopes to “break even” and get the money back by ticket sales which he says have been very positive.
“We are going to rely heavily on our alumni base. We have a very strong alumni base up in Saint Louis metropolitan area close to 24,000 alums so that exceeds the number of Salukis’. So we’ve had a concentrated effort in terms of reaching out to our alums,” Alnutt said.
Alnutt said he has already sold 3,000 tickets to Southeast fans. Southeast is going to play in the new stadium that opened in April 2006.
Tickets are still being sold at the Athletics Administration office and at Busch Stadium on game day.
