Junior student football tickets sold out in about 90 seconds this morning, just one day after a senior ticket sale that did not sell out for nine hours.
"Less than two minutes into the sale, the number of tickets already sold combined with the number of students waiting in line accounted for all the tickets," Greg Myford, associate athletic director of marketing and communication, said. "If you weren't in there within the first minute, you were likely shut out."
About 8,200 juniors had pre-registered to vie for about 5,880 tickets this morning beginning at 7 a.m., Myford said. By 7:20 a.m., all the tickets had been purchased, he said. About 72 percent of the pre-registered juniors received tickets.
Twenty-eight percent of about 21,000 student tickets were allotted for the junior class - the largest class in Penn State's history. The student section holds about 21,500 students, but a portion of that section is reserved for the Blue Band, Myford said.
The current juniors were high school seniors during the 2005 football season, when Penn State won the Orange Bowl and finished with an 11-1 record. Student tickets sold out in then-record time within 13 days in June 2006, the first student ticket sale in which current juniors were able to participate. In 2005, tickets sold out over the course of five months.
Myford said the "urgency" of the 2006 sale could explain this year's rapid sale.
"Prior to [the 2005] season, there was not the same urgency," Myford said. "The junior class was really the first class that experienced that avid demand and kind of that ticket sale frenzy mentality. There's a new normal to the urgency with which students go about buying their tickets, and that's something the current senior class didn't experience."
On the wall of the student-created Facebook event for the sale, "Penn State Student Football Tickets - JUNIORS," some students complained about the quick sale and offered to pay double for tickets.
Anthony Judice (junior-biology) said he signed in to the sale at 7 a.m., but took too long entering credit card information and lost his place in line.
"I went back, and they'd already sold out. This was at, like, 7:02," he said, adding that he thinks the junior class's size may be to blame for the brisk sale this morning. "Seniors that don't meet those credit requirements fall into the junior class, and we had the largest class in Penn State history. I don't know where I'd really place the blame."
But Myford said that the ticket allocation was proportional to the size of the junior class - including students whose credits allowed them to participate in the junior sale, even if, age-wise, they do not identify as members of the junior class.
"Those allocations and those class standings would be taken into account when the tickets are allocated. That 28 percent of the overall tickets - that incorporates you being a junior even though you've only been here one year," Myford said.
UPUA president Gavin Keirans (junior-business administration) said he purchased tickets this morning and had no problems with the process.
"I've liked how it's worked so far. The whole pre-registration idea really put the focus on people who really wanted the tickets," he said. "I think when there's such a high demand for the tickets, it might weed out those who aren't really interested."
Myford said the new ticket process is still going smoothly, though some glitches have occurred.
"There was one person yesterday who had pre-registered and had the confirmation. It allowed the person into the sale, but it didn't recognize their password. That's an example of a random anomaly," he said.
However, Myford said that some students may have had problems getting tickets because they didn't know how to navigate the ticket-sale process.
"If we had approximately 5,880 people be able to successfully do it in the first 20 minutes of the sale, it wasn't the process that had any issues, it was probably the individual not being able to go through the steps correctly or something as simple as not being pre-registered," he said.
Sophomore tickets will go on sale tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.; freshman can buy tickets Thursday and graduate students will be able to purchase tickets Friday.
