After four months of debate about more than a dozen proposals, the university Athletic Council will vote early next month on a proposed reallocation of football tickets after Ohio State switches to semesters in 2012.

The Finance and Facilities subcommittee of the council presented its recommendation April 6, but before the full council votes to accept or reject the subcommittee’s recommendation, other issues are quickly filling up the agenda.

In the second of three parts, The Lantern will explore some of the issues related to football ticket redistribution that the council might take up.

Today’s article explores the donors and longtime ticket purchasers, two groups with many seats at football games, but for whom the Athletic Council does not distribute tickets.

The Athletic Council is grappling with the best way to allocate faculty, staff, student and alumni tickets after the semester switch.
But even after distributing all those tickets, the Ohio Stadium would still be a sad sight on game day: half-empty.

“There are a lot of other bodies in the stadium,” said Karen Mancl, chair of the Finance and Facilities subcommittee.

They include the visiting team, its marching band and fans, public officials, media and people whose football tickets come by way of the size of their wallets — big donors.

The council is not tasked with supplying donor tickets. The authority for those tickets and the eclectic mix of others lies with the Athletic Department.

During the 2008 season, the donors’ share of tickets was nearly 22,000 a game.

They came from two groups: the President’s Club, a group of donors that contributes at least $2,500 a year to the university, and the Buckeye Club, the Athletic Department booster program. Members of the Buckeye Club earn the opportunity to buy season tickets with a $1,500 annual donation.

Peter Koltak, a student representative on the council, said the high number of donors at football games is essential for the Athletic Department.

“The department has to remain a solvent organization. It has to keep the money coming in, in order to pay its own bills,” he said. None of the groups on the council had the desire or willingness to reduce donor tickets, Koltak said.

After donors, the second largest group not allocated by the Athletic Council was longtime ticket purchasers, with almost 15,000 tickets per game. This is a unique group of alumni who have the ability to purchase season tickets every year.

Most alumni are eligible to purchase a pair of tickets to one home game each football season only after applying for a lottery with a 90 percent chance of receiving tickets.

Like the faculty and staff point system, the origin of the longtime ticket purchasers program dates to the 1980s.

In 1986, the Athletic Department, the Athletic Council and the Alumni Association created the one-time program that granted alumni who had purchased tickets for 15 consecutive years the ability to buy season tickets for the rest of their lives.

The program requires no donation and is based on the buyers’ loyalty to OSU football, Mancl said. The only requirement is that they continue to purchase their season tickets every year or lose their buying privileges.

Mancl said the program was instituted at a time when the stadium didn’t always sell out, and the program “promised” these deserving fans their tickets.

“These are very loyal fans,” she said, “and as long as they’re alive and as long as their spouse is alive, they will have the opportunity to purchase tickets.”

Original ticket buyer are allowed a one-time transfer to a spouse.
Although the program itself doesn’t fall under the council’s purview, tickets that are slowly being freed up one day could.

“As of right now, [the longtime tickets] are not being freed up in significant numbers every year,” Koltak said. “However, that will change, probably in the next 10 years.”

The youngest members of the program are now likely in their 60s, and tickets are slowly becoming available.

At the April Athletic Council meeting, the council discussed the longtime ticket purchasers. When members wanted to know how many of those tickets become available each year, director of Athletics Gene Smith said trying to redistribute tickets from this pool now “would be nibbling at the edges” because so few regularly become available.

“We’re not talking about ending that program,” Mancl said, “because these people are big fans and have been very loyal to the program. We just want to think forward as to how to reallocate those tickets.”

Koltak said the council should have a policy in place “sooner rather than later” for what to do if several thousand of these tickets become available in a given year.

Students should have first pick of the tickets that become available, he said, followed by the alumni, and then faculty and staff.

However, the longtime purchasers pay full price for their tickets, and if they are shifted to students, who pay a discounted price, it would likely result in a loss of revenue.

“There are lots of ways to offset that,” he said. “It’s more about thinking creatively than anything else.” He listed ending the faculty and staff discount on tickets as a possible solution.

But Mancl said there was a “good chance” the tickets would be released back to the regular alumni ticket pool because the longtime ticket buyers are already alumni, and the council wants to “maintain a strong alumni presence” at football games.

A longtime season ticket package contains about seven games. If it were allocated back to alumni, it would amount to seven additional games for alumni who aren’t eligible to purchase season tickets.

“It will have a big impact on alumni ticket availability over time,” she said.

But, so far, Mancl said, no decisions have been made.