Lantern
No. 1 ranking drives ticket sales
Numbers of alumni tickets refunded after unexpected surge in student ticket sales
Travis Minnear
With the excitement surrounding Ohio State's first preseason No. 1 ranking since 1998, the Department of Athletics has reported a surge in student ticket sales. The ticket office has sold more than 6,000 additional student tickets compared to 2005. Extra sales pushed student ticket orders near 31,000 - likely the highest amount ever according to Bill Jones, senior director of Ticketing and Premium Seats at OSU.
"We did not turn down any student who wanted tickets by the deadline, which was upwards of 31,000 this year," Jones said.
Douglas Strong, a junior in sports and leisure studies, said he did not think additional ticket orders were because of students jumping on the bandwagon, but rather because of OSU's "hardcore fans."
Strong, who watched last week's game from C-deck, said the additional student presence could give the Buckeyes an edge in upcoming home games, but ultimately the team determines who wins.
"The crowd's going to help a little bit. Mostly you've got Troy (Smith) and Teddy (Ginn Jr.) out there making a lot of plays ... The crowd plays a little part. It definitely gets the team hyped," Strong said.
The influx of additional orders may have caused students to be spread more throughout the stadium than in years past. Increased demand limited the amount of seats available in the northwest corner of Ohio Stadium, which is the "typical student section" and is first to be filled with undergraduates, Jones said.
"So what may have happened is you may have had a senior in A-deck in south stands, which may not have happened in the past," he said. "Reason being is we filled the northwest corner that we're typically used to having students in. So the question was, 'Do I put upperclassmen in B-deck in the northwest corner, or do I put them in A-deck, because that's what they requested, down in the south stands?'"
Seating priorities are based on student rank and deck preference.
Jones said they tried to accommodate upperclassmen's deck preferences first. "But what groups who'll request to sit together need to remember (is) that they get seated by the lowest-ranking individual in the group. So if five seniors wanted to sit with two sophomores, we would seat them based on the sophomores," he said.
Although not everyone benefits from additional student ticket sales. Jones said the surge in student orders affected some OSU faculty, staff and alumni, who were unable to purchase tickets.
Zach Woolley, a 2006 OSU business graduate, suffered as a result of the extra ticket sales. He registered with the Alumni Association for tickets after his winter graduation. After OSU cashed his check for payment, Woolley received a notice stating that his tickets to the game against Minnesota would not be available, because of over sale.
"It was a significant amount of time later (after the check was cashed). They sent a notice in the mail saying that they oversold, and that they tried to switch tickets to a different game. It just didn't work out," Woolley said.
Woolley said OSU refunded his money in "a fairly timely manner." He said since students purchased the tickets, it made his situation a little better.
"You always want to see a Buckeye game, especially after you're done. But actually I didn't know about the circumstances," he said. "I guess if they're selling to students - if there's actually an increase in student tickets - that makes it better for me. That's fine to me because students should be able to go to the games first."
Additional student ticket sales did not affect public access to tickets. The Department of Athletics does not sell directly to the public, but to several large "entities", such as the visiting team's ticket office, Jones said.
When these entities have tickets leftover, they return them to OSU, which sells them to the public.
"There won't be anything for the public unless it gets returned back to us," Jones said. "So basically in the beginning of the year we know we're going to be sold out. It's just a matter of who's going to have those tickets. And if for instance by contract every team that comes to the stadium gets X amount of tickets, they may not use all those tickets. So we basically take those tickets and that's what we would sell to the public."
Questions or concerns regarding athletic tickets can be directed to the OSU Department of Athletics ticket office at 1-800-GO-BUCKS or
hangonsloopy.com.
