Tickets sold, with a hitch

A series of problems with the Pitt men’s basketball ticket Web site may not be as bad as some… A series of problems with the Pitt men’s basketball ticket Web site may not be as bad as some students believe, according to University officials.

After the scheduled season-ticket sale two weekends ago ended in failure, some students trying again to buy tickets Sunday encountered problems re-registering their student ID numbers or processing their credit card information.

Many students’ ID numbers were registered at the beginning of the ordering process, giving them 30 minutes to complete the transactions. After they entered credit card data, they waited at their computers, staring at a “Processing Order” page on their Web browsers as their half hour ticked away and expired. Since their ID numbers were already registered, students’ second attempts to buy tickets were blocked. Other students suspected problems came from slow connections and servers incapable of handling the load of so many students registering within minutes of each other.

“We’ve gotten about 30 calls from people who were kicked off during the process [of ordering],” said Mike Pratapas, Pitt’s senior associate athletics director. “If there’s a way for us to fix it, we’ll try to do it. We just don’t know exactly what it is yet.”

But Pitt’s athletics department is confident that any student who wishes to attend a home basketball game will be able to do so, whether or not they purchased season tickets.

“We’ve always had tickets to sell, in the past, on the second pick-up day,” Athletics Ticketing Director Joe Arnone said, referring to the day on which any tickets not picked up by season ticket holders are put back on sale to other students.

As of yesterday morning, 800 students bought full season tickets, 570 bought tickets for games against Big East opponents, and slightly more than 400 bought the non-conference package of tickets for games against other opponents, according to the athletics department. Approximately 200 non-conference packages were still available.

There are six “second pick-up days” for Pitt’s 19 basketball home games, beginning Nov. 2. Tickets for Big East games will be available to non-season-ticketholders on Dec. 9 and Jan. 10. Tickets will be offered for $5 per game.

“That’s how much it would cost if you take it out of a season ticket,” Pratapas said. “This isn’t about revenue; what we’d like to see is 1,400 Pitt students at every game.”

Out of 1,400 available seats, the average non-conference game drew 501 Pitt students last year. Big East games had an average turnout of 884 students.

Despite some students’ worries about “camping out” for single-game tickets, Associate Athletics Director Jim Earle does not believe this will be a problem.

“We didn’t have any issues with that last year,” Earle said. “Only two home games last year were sold out to students before we offered tickets to other fans.”

Ticket sales were cancelled two weekends ago after the tickets were accidentally offered a day early by Paciolan, Pitt’s California-based online ticket sales provider. Earle characterized the mistake as a “simple human error” by a Paciolan programmer.

Last year’s debut of the online ticketing services was botched by Paciolan servers unable to accept the number of nearly simultaneous student ticket requests. Athletics Director Jeff Long called the October 2003 episode “disappointing.”

The Pitt News reached a Paciolan employee who confirmed “there were problems with the Web site [Sunday] morning, but they were solved relatively quickly.”

Student Government Board President Brian Kelly said he attempted to buy tickets on his off-campus computer, but his computer connection was slower than those offered in campus housing, and he was only able to obtain a non-conference package.

“The online system is completely absurd,” Kelly said. “It’s frustrating, unfair and seems like the worst system possible.”

Paciolan has managed all Pitt athletics ticket sales for the last 12 years. The 24-year-old company also provides similar services to approximately 90 percent of U.S. colleges and several professional sports teams.

“There are limited options in collegiate ticketing services,” Earle said. “[Paciolan] appeared to have underestimated student demand for tickets. But we’ve been partners for a dozen years, and we stuck with them.”