Penn State is working on making student football tickets easier to buy than winning the Powerball ticket.
Earlier this year, students decried an athletic ticket office announcement that football tickets would be sold on a lottery basis. The office has been working to find a better alternative. Since the reversal of the lottery decision, many ideas have been kicked around. The office is now on the road to finding the best one.
One of the proposed alternatives would involve students swiping their ID cards to gain entrance to games. This idea would cut down on scalping and guarantee a better chance of bowl game tickets to students who attend all the games.
One issue: students who want to sell tickets to their friends might have to enter their tickets into a lottery system full of students on a waiting list. But the priority here is fairness, and if the system cuts down on price-gouging, it's better than the system we currently have. The system would also ensure that every ticket would be accounted for, and Beaver Stadium would be nearly full whether we play rival Ohio State or Florida International.
This idea is a spinoff of the system. For examples, the University of Maryland. They adopted a loyalty system in which students can earn an advantage to buying tickets in high demand by attending sporting events for less popular teams. That system gives incentive for students to fill the stands for sports that would otherwise have empty bleachers.
It would also make sure that everyone who gets football tickets puts in the commitment to earn them.
The only drawback to a loyalty-based system is that any fan with extracurricular commitments might not be able to attend other sporting events. But really, if you can make time for football every Saturday, you can make time for other sports, too.
There is no perfect system for selling tickets, but the best one would limit scalping as much as possible and give tickets to those students who want them the most.
What's important: the current decision-making process is that the athletic ticket office is now engaging in a dialogue with the community and gaining feedback on potential solutions. It's a much better process than announcing a system only to find the entire student body hates it.
With dialogue flowing, at least the athletic ticket office won't have to deal with the roar of 40,000 angry students. And no matter what system it settles on, they'll still get the roar of 110,000 amped fans.
