Tix plan unveiled

For the third year in a row, Pitt students won’t have to venture up “Cardiac Hill” to purchase… For the third year in a row, Pitt students won’t have to venture up “Cardiac Hill” to purchase basketball tickets.

The athletics department will officially announce the details of its revamped ticketing policy for men’s basketball today. While the process will still take place online like it has for the last two years, the makeup of the process has been altered drastically, in ways in which marketing and promotions’ Chris Ferris thinks better suits the student body.

“We’re very excited to change this procedure,” he said. “We feel this procedure will give students more opportunities to attend basketball games in the Petersen Events Center.”

The use of online ticketing has been scrutinized over the last two years when students encountered problems with purchasing tickets. With a new online host, TicketReturn, handling the duties this year and a handful of suggestions from organizations like Student Government Board, The Panther Pitt and the Oakland Zoo, Pitt has put together a new policy, one that Ferris exhibited the utmost confidence in.

The process begins, like in years past, with online registration. But even this simple step is done differently than last year’s process, Ferris pointed out.

Previously, students were forced to create a user name and password on Pitt’s athletics Web Site, www.pittsburghpanthers.com. Now, students still have to go to the Web site, but they will be redirected to my.pitt.edu. Here, the student can log in using his or her normal Pitt user name and password.

Students then click on the “Student Services” link then the subcategory “Student Tickets” link. What comes next is the personal online ticketing account page, where registration takes place.

Once a student is registered, then the process really kicks into high gear. Ferris explained the process, where tickets are distributed on a game-by-game basis and involve a request process prior to each one, is easiest viewed in a four-period format.

The first is the “Student Registration Period,” where registered students have a two-day window, which comes a week before each game, to put in a request for a ticket for that game. If ticket requests are fewer than the allotted number of 1,400 student seats, then all registered students are awarded tickets via e-mail.

If there are more requests than number of tickets, however, then the “Loyalty Distribution Method,” which is a loyalty and attendance-based lottery, comes into play. Students earn “Loyalty Points” by attending games, but incur losses in points for failing to attend games for which they have claimed a ticket, otherwise known as being a “no-show.”

Ferris was quick to point out, however, that order does not matter when determining who gets tickets.

“It doesn’t matter if you are the first person or the last person to register,” he said. “There is no relevance.”

Any tickets not claimed are then distributed, with Loyalty Points taken into consideration again, to students who registered for, but did not receive tickets in the initial distribution. This second round occurs the day after the claim period ends for those awarded tickets the first time around. Students awarded tickets on the second distribution have one day to claim their tickets.

Once a student is awarded a ticket, he or she moves into the “Ticket Claim Period,” which is a two-day window to claim the ticket by purchasing it and printing it online, otherwise it goes back out for resale.

Any tickets left over after the second distribution fall into the third period, the “Ticket Print-On-Demand” level where students can request any available tickets and print them out on the spot. This only occurs if tickets are still available.

The only thing left for a student to do is to actually attend the games, but the new system provides incentive for students to attend all games. Period Four describes the idea of Loyalty Points.

Games for which the demand for tickets exceeds the supply are worth of only one Loyalty Point for attendance. Those with a demand lower than the supply, however, are worth two points. The idea is to reward students who attend the early-season games, which are usually sparsely attended, by increasing the likelihood that they will receive tickets for the higher-profile games later in the season.

To put this system to the test, Pitt will practice this method for a “Preseason Tip-Off” event hosted by the Oakland Zoo on Tuesday, Nov. 1. Students will go through the regular ticketing procedure for this event and will be awarded one Loyalty Point for attendance. This point will be added to the three points given to every student once he or she registers.

Ferris also pointed to an open student forum that will be held on Thursday, Oct. 20, as a way for students to ask any questions about the process before any of it is put into play.

“Our hope is that, by then, students will have received fliers and read about it enough so they can form their questions,” Ferris said, later indicating that fliers with the policy and directions will be mailed to students next week.

In that flier will also be the price of each game and, while the price level of an entire season’s worth of games did rise slightly, Ferris said he still feels that attendance will increase “across the board” for the Panthers’ 19 home games this season.

Pitt’s two exhibition games against Slippery Rock and Indiana (Pa.) are priced at $2 apiece. The first four non-conference match-ups are $3 apiece, while the rest of the 11-game home non-conference slate are $3 each. The eight conference matchups cost $6 a game, meaning, if a student were to win tickets to each game, it would sum to $75.

Another change in the policy is the actual claiming of tickets. Once a student claims a ticket and he or she prints it on his own terms, then it must be presented at each game with a proper Pitt ID. The ticket, which has the student’s name on it, is scanned and must match the ID, meaning tickets are non-transferable between students.

Also, if a student is awarded tickets but cannot go, he or she has until noon two days prior to game day to cancel the ticket request. Doing so before the deadline will prevent a loss in Loyalty Points. Any canceled tickets are put back into the system for distribution, just as if they were never claimed.

Ferris encourages any students with questions regarding the policy to come to the forum so that they are clear on how the policy works before the first request period, slated for Oct. 29, begins.

“It’s exciting,” he said of the new policy. “It’s harder [to do], but it’s better. It’s the right thing to do to make the experience better for our students. The goal is to have students in student seats from game one to the end. We want our home court advantage to be great. We have a great environment [in the Petersen] and it’s no surprise that the students set the pace.”