Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Matt Willems remembers waiting in line for hours last year to get his ticket for the KU-Missouri football game at Arrowhead Stadium. Willems, Lawrence senior and long-time KU sports fan, remembers watching as people walked up to the window with as many as 100 KUIDs and bought a ticket with each one of them. And he remembers going to the game, having no fun and telling himself that he wouldn’t be going back next year.
To avoid last year’s muddled ticket distribution, which caused some students to wait in line for more than six hours to secure their ticket for the Border Showdown, the Athletics Department has changed how it will sell student tickets for this year’s Nov. 29 matchup against Missouri. No longer will students wanting to buy a ticket for the game have to wait in line. Instead, the coveted student tickets will be sold exclusively online at www.kuathletics.com.
Students wait in line for tickets to the KU vs. MU game at Allen Fieldhouse Monday morning. Some students even camped out the night before so that they could be first in line to get seats.
“It was by far the worst ticket procedure pickup that I had ever had, either at KU or somewhere else,” Willems said. “The whole ticket process last year kind of soured me on the whole game and it turned out to just be a prelude to the real problem, which was the game itself. I think they kind of heard the cry of the masses and changed it enough that now, the people that want to go have a fair shot at getting a ticket to go this year.”
Tickets will sell online for $10 from Sept. 8 to Sept. 12. Only 3,000 tickets have been set aside for students, though more than 8,000 students have bought season tickets in past years. Students who buy their tickets online must print out a voucher and take both the voucher and their KUID to Arrowhead Stadium on game day to receive their ticket. Students wishing to sit with friends must go to the ticket window at Arrowhead at the same time.
Jim Marchiony, associate athletics director, said the new system would work better for students.
“This is certainly an easier and fairer way to do it,” Marchiony said.
All-Sports Combo ticketholders should receive an e-mail from the department soon with details about the purchase procedure. The tickets will also be available to any student who wishes to buy one because the game is not a part of the University’s season ticket package.
Last year, there was no limit to how many tickets students could buy for the Missouri game as long as they had a KUID for each ticket they wanted to purchase. As the line outside the Allen Fieldhouse ticket office stretched down Naismith Drive, students cut in line with their friends or held spots for friends who were in class.
Now students will be able to purchase only one ticket for themselves, and they won’t be able to receive the ticket until right before they enter the stadium on game day.
“There won’t be people buying 15 tickets with their friends’ student IDs and then going to the game with a friend and scalping the other 13 tickets like last year,” Willems said. “I think as far as distributing tickets, this was the way to do it.”
In addition to problems obtaining tickets, fans faced crowded parking lots and lengthy traffic jams before last year’s game. With ongoing construction at Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums, this year could be even worse.
“If everyone shows up two minutes before the game then obviously they are going to be late,” Marchiony said. “We’re encouraging people to get there early, especially because of the construction going on out there. It would really be wise to get there early and get into the stadium early.”
When tickets go on sale next week, one person who won’t be buying one will be Willems. Instead, he plans on going to a local bar and watching the game with friends.
“Besides the whole ticket problem, the parking and crowd control were both terrible as well,” Willems said. “The whole game experience was just awful last year. I don’t plan to go.”
— - Edited by Mary Sorrick
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Comments
Football ticket pickup changes for students
This should be the last year at Arrowhead. Keep the KU-MU games on campus, it was a big factor in Mizzou's win last year having it at Arrowhead instead of in Lawrence.
There's no way for a program to build home-field advantage without having THe rivalry game at its home field every other year!
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