Collegiate Times

Ticket Center

The Virginia Tech men’s basketball team has experienced a successful season, especially at home, where the Hokies are 14-1. Some of their most loyal fans, however, were not able to witness the Hokies’ victories in Cassell Coliseum.

Since last year, the SGA has made efforts to hear and deal with complaints about the way students get tickets to basketball games.

Brandon Carroll, SGA president; Eric Rucinski, SGA representative to the athletics committee; and Abby Boggs, Hokies on Fire president, have been working to make the home basketball games more accessible.

Talking with students, collecting data, examining practices employed by other schools and running test programs through Hokies on Fire are just some of the ways the SGA is trying to come to a conclusion.

Athletics, however, hasn’t seen the need to change the current ticketing system because of the issue of fairness to all students. SGA has proposed Tech look to ACC peers for ideas.

NEIGHBORS’ PRACTICES

The procedures in place at other ACC schools offer alternative systems for Tech to consider.

Many schools utilize a hybrid of an online lottery system and waiting in line. And although Tech doesn’t use a loyalty point system, many schools do.

At the University of Maryland, the online system “Ticket Return” tracks the number of ticket requests for certain games. Students can apply for a ticket online two weeks before a game.

If more tickets are requested than seat capacity, the system automatically turns the requests into a lottery. This “doesn’t usually happen” in the case of football, according to assistant athletics director of ticket services, Matt Monroe — but it usually occurs for men’s basketball.

This lottery is 25 percent based on a weighted loyalty system. Students get two points for every UMD sporting event they attend, so students who attend a game are 25 percent more likely to win the lottery than students who do not attend any games, and those who attend more games have an advantage over those who attended fewer games.

Monroe said UMD considers its system “safe and easy.”

Florida State University runs first-come, first-serve, with students being able to walk up to the ticket distribution window on the day before and the day of a game.

“The walk-up line before the game can get pretty significant,” said Ben Zierden, director of ticket operations at FSU.

FSU’s system is similar to the system in place at Duke. Two separate systems for undergraduate and graduate students control who can wait in line for tickets. Many Duke students camp out for days waiting for tickets. The camping area is traditionally known as “K-ville” and is controlled by student line monitors.

“There’s also a culture in the camp out area,” said Bart Smith, Duke’s director of promotions. “There’s a lot of community there.”

Getting points under UVa’s loyalty-based SHOTS system through attending Cavalier sporting events not only improves fans’ chances of winning tickets in lotteries but also grants them priority seating.

“Students receive points for attendance at men’s basketball games as well as selected Olympic sports events that help them with priority for men’s basketball tickets. UVa uses a timed entry system so that those students with the most points get both more chances in any lottery and the best time to enter for the general admission seating,” Jim Daves, assistant director of athletics for media relations, said in an e-mail.

Different schools have reported different issues with their ticketing systems.

At UMD, some ticket scanners have malfunctioned, Monroe said. He also said sometimes if the ticket request system gets overloaded, students couldn’t access their accounts, adding that the system also occasionally fails to count the points students receive from attending games.

At FSU, the walk-up lines for basketball games can sometimes get long since it doesn’t use an online ticketing system for basketball. Zierden said many SEC schools use general admission whereas most ACC schools use the block or assigned seating methods.

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A version of this article appeared in the Mar 3 issue of the Collegiate Times.