The Ohio State basketball team was named the No. 4 team in the country by the USA Today top 25 poll, and with the season right around the corner, it’s time for students to purchase their season tickets. However, student ticket-holders will only have to present their BuckIDs for entry to the games this year.
Brett Scarbrough, assistant athletic director, said that instead of students getting a voucher for tickets like last year, all purchased tickets are going to be loaded onto students’ BuckIDs.
Scarbrough said Undergraduate Student Government and The Buckeye Nuthouse, the OSU student men’s basketball cheering section, approached the athletic department asking for an easier way for students to pick up their tickets. With this change, students are not required to go to the Schottenstein Center to pick up their ticket packages as they did in previous years.
“So we kind of worked with USG and Nuthouse and threw this idea around,” Scarbrough said. “We started putting the plans in place from a functionality standpoint in order to make them work and we were able to get all those ducks in a row and be able to do it that way.”
Scarbrough said that after students purchase a student ticket package, the tickets will be loaded onto the student’s BuckID. Students will swipe their student ID at the arena’s student entrance for verification. Students will then walk to a table where they will be handed a ticket for the best available seat in the student section.
Seats in the student section are “first come, first serve,” Scarbrough said. This means the earlier students gets in line, the closer they will be to the court. Even if students don’t want to go to every game, Scarbrough said students have options to give away their tickets.
Students can just give their BuckID to the person taking their ticket and they will be able to get in.
“In other words, we aren’t going to be looking at the picture on the ID,” Scarbrough said. “We just validate whether there is a ticket present on there.”
Secondly, Scarbrough said there will be an online functionality where students can transfer a ticket from one BuckID to another by using the ID numbers. This way, the student receiving the ticket will be able to use his or her own ID instead of borrowing someone else’s.
Sara Wesselkamper, a first-year in exploration, said although the new system might make it harder to sell tickets, it will be more convenient.
“I like the idea because I’m always scared I’m going to lose my tickets,” Wesselkamper said.
While some students have expressed concerns that the process will make it unnecessarily difficult to sell their tickets, others like Matt Curtis, a fifth-year in marketing, don’t think it should be an issue.
“If you are going to buy them, then you shouldn’t end up selling them anyway,” Curtis said.
Scarbrough said with the semester change, OSU had to think about what games to include in the student package. The games included in the student package are scheduled while classes are in session. The student package includes no games during winter break or Fall Semester finals week.
Illinois, the last game of the year and a Big Ten game, isn’t included in the student package because it is scheduled during spring break, when students won’t be in class.
“Our goal is to make sure that we have a good environment and the students are a huge part of that,” Scarbrough said. “We need to make sure when we design this package, that we have 2,400 students show up.”
A similar ticketing system has been used at other schools such as Penn State for its football tickets, but Scarbrough said OSU needs to try the system out with basketball before implementing it with football.
Student ticket packages consist of nine games between Nov. 23 and Feb. 24 and will cost $123. Additional games are available to students and can bought individually for $16 each.
Student ticket packages go on sale Thursday at 6 p.m. online and are available through Oct. 22 at 5 p.m.