Allen Fieldhouse opens courtside seats

Monday, August 24, 2009

In an effort to raise funds and increase the fan experience, season tickets for courtside seats in Allen Fieldhouse were sold for the first time, Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony said Friday.

For $15,000 per seat, the top donors to the Williams Fund were able to purchase an enhanced view previously available only to the media. Forty seats sold in just a couple of months.

Besides making games more fun for the fans, Marchiony said, the income helps the Williams Fund operate the Athletics Department and helps give scholarships to student athletes.

This decision is good for some fans, but the media will have to make adjustments in losing the spots they held for decades. With the exception of radio and television broadcasters for the Jayhawks and the visiting team, most of the media will be moved.

Media members will now sit in the two end zones in addition to Section 13A in the upper southwest corner reserved for overflow media. Television and radio announcers will be among the few media members to retain their spots along the court.

There has not been any feedback regarding this new arrangement, Marchiony said, as the announcement was made just last week. Marchiony also said he thought the $15,000 price tag was a fair deal.

“We thought it was reasonably priced,” he said.

Earlier this year, the UCLA basketball program said it would sell courtside seats in its new Pauley Pavilion (opening in 2012) for $500,000. The half million is mainly to compensate for the $185 million the school is paying for renovations to the current arena.

So why did the tickets in Allen Fieldhouse start selling this year? No particular reason.

“There was no special thing about this year,” Marchiony said. “We just thought it was time to try it.”

Kansas is the last Big 12 school to offer some form of courtside fan seating. Now all conference schools offer courtside access to fans.

— —Edited by Abbey Strusz

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So the media still has floor seating, it's just right behind the baskets.

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