Pat Kelsey effect: Louisville basketball seeing boom in season-ticket sales, NIL donations

How good of a salesman is Pat Kelsey?

When he was introduced as the new Louisville men's basketball head coach last month, the 48-year-old Cincinnati native found a way to plug his father's car dealership. He said he used to sling Chevrolets there "to pay the bills" when he took his first coaching job, leading the freshman boys team at his alma mater, Elder High School.

"If he wanted to go into sales and just do that entirely," said Joe Schoenfeld, the Panthers' longtime varsity head coach, "he'd be an executive someplace real fast. He's just outstanding."

Business has been booming for the Cardinals since Kelsey sold fans on his vision.

To sum up his pitch in a sentence: One of the sport's winningest programs isn't "broken" after hitting historic lows during the Kenny Payne era; it's "ready to rock.

"Everybody in this room knows where we want to go — right?" he said. "It's about getting to work and getting after it."

Kelsey's mentor, the late coach Skip Prosser, taught him a motto of, "Never delay gratitude."

U of L supporters have followed suit after seeing his energetic approach to the rebuilding process.

Here's a look at how the coach's arrival has spurred new season-ticket sales and donations to the Cards' name, image and likeness (NIL) collective, 502 Circle:

Pat Kelsey's early impact on Louisville basketball season tickets

Laura Clemente had a game plan — position the members of her team charged with facilitating new men's basketball season-ticket sales near their office phones during Kelsey's introductory news conference.

The phones rang off the hook, to the tune of 308 new sales between March 28-29.

"They were (in the office) well after 5 p.m. on Good Friday to keep up with the excitement," said Clemente, Louisville's senior associate athletics director/chief revenue officer.

By April 12, she told The Courier Journal, they had sold more than 670 new season tickets — a majority of them in the KFC Yum! Center's lower bowl.

The fast start has positioned the Cards to dwarf their new season-ticket sales for Year 1 of the Payne era. Between his March 18, 2022, introduction and a May 26, 2022, meeting of the U of L Athletic Association's Board of Directors, Clemente's team had 539 new orders; which was more than it sold during the entire offseason leading up to head coach Chris Mack's final campaign.

"Obviously, it's the honeymoon period, right?" athletics director Josh Heird said at the time. "But (Payne) has the ability to get out and really embrace the community and unite the community and unite Cardinal Nation. He’s doing that; and we're feeling the impact of it. Now, we're feeling the impact of it financially."

By the end of Payne's disastrous 12-52 tenure, Heird & Co. had a different tone.

Louisville's season-ticket numbers dropped from 12,159 to 10,743 between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, according to data obtained via an open records request. Across his 35 games at the 22,090-seat Yum! Center, the Cards drew an average scanned ticket attendance of 6,504.

That led the athletics department projecting in late January a $2 million revenue shortfall for the program.

Brighter days have arrived, however. In addition to the wave of new sales, Clemente reported a 20% renewal rate as of April 5 — eight days into the process.

"I know it doesn't sound that high," she said, "but that's pretty accelerated.

"Our renewal deadline is July 1; so (during) the month of June you typically see like a 40% jump," she added. "This is certainly earlier for a lot of people than usual."

Pat Kelsey's early impact on Louisville basketball's NIL game

Dan Furman's phone, like those in U of L's ticket office, was buzzing March 28.

Day 1 of the Kelsey era generated more new 502 Circle members than any other in the collective's brief history.

"The energy, it's infectious," said Furman, who's a year into serving as 502 Circle's president. "It's hard for you to watch (Kelsey's introductory news conference) and not want to be a part of it."

That was merely the jumping-off point as the Cards try to arm the coach with an NIL budget to build a top-flight inaugural roster through the NCAA transfer portal. On April 1, 502 Circle received a $1 million matching donation earmarked for men's basketball from the family behind Glow Brands.

Two days later, Furman reported on X, formerly Twitter, that fundraising efforts had surpassed $500,000 — more than half of the match. On April 13, he said the collective had cleared $750,000.

"We've just got to go find ways to be competitive right now, raise as much money as possible and put our programs in a spot to win," Furman told The Courier Journal. "That's what our fans and donors deserve; they deserve to have top portal classes and top recruiting classes and championships. That's what this is all about. There's no secret behind that."

Kelsey, for his part, has embraced the ever-changing NIL landscape, dating back to his three-year stint at Charleston. During an April 5 appearance on WLCL 93.9 FM, he called it the "lifeblood" of a program.

"We're going to run toward it," he said during an appearance on WHAS 840 AM later that day. "If you're going to sulk and pout and complain about it and say, 'Woe is me,' your butt's going to get run over."

That mentality is music to 502 Circle founder Marc Spiegel's ears after Payne's tenure began with the coach telling a collection of season-ticket holders in June 2022 he wasn't going to prioritize NIL in his recruiting pitches.

"Any great leader I've been around has always had a plan to attack every single day," Spiegel said March 31 on X, in a Space hosted by WLCL 93.9 FM's Drew Deener. "A lot of times, it's a plan to attack every hour of every day; and we've been missing that."

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Pat Kelsey has Louisville basketball season-ticket sales, NIL booming