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New student ticketing policy aims to reward high-attendance fans |
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Thursday, 23 August 2007 |
 Fans support the Mountaineers in the final football scrimmage at Kidd Brewer Stadium Saturday.
| Holt Menzies | The Appalachian
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by REBECCA GARDNER
News Reporter
A new student ticketing policy for football, basketball, volleyball, and other university athletic events will soon allow the university to better gauge attendance at games.
The new student ticketing policy is also known as the Mountaineer Maniacs Loyalty Program.
“The main purpose of this [policy] is to increase our accuracy of how many students attend games and for efficiency,” Wesley L. Berry said. Berry is an administrative assistant in the athletics office.
Students must now visit www.goasu.com to obtain tickets for ticketed sporting events.
All student tickets are free and students may obtain up to two guest passes, Berry said.
Guest tickets for football are $15, men’s basketball tickets are $5, and women’s basketball tickets are $1.
In
conjunction with the loyalty program, students will receive one point
for attending football and men’s basketball games, and two points for
attending volleyball, baseball, and women’s basketball, according to
the Appalachian Student Ticketing Policy brochure.
No points will be awarded for away games or intramural sports.
“We
want to promote our own attendance,” Berry said. “We like to see people
travel, but often it is difficult to gauge the number of tickets we
receive.”
Intramural
sporting events are not included in the point system because the system
is just for athletic events that require tickets.
The new policy also addresses the distribution of tickets to high-demand sporting events.
According
to the brochure, “Loyalty points will be important if there is a
high-demand, low-supply ticketed event such as the National
Championship game or an NCAA tournament appearance.”
“Instead
of instituting a lottery, the students with the highest point totals
will have the first opportunity at those tickets,” according to the
policy.
While deciding the new policy, several things were taken into account.
“We
talked about security of students, especially because some students who
graduated still had their AppCards and weren’t paying an athletic fee,”
Berry said.
Other
aspects of the Mountaineer Maniacs Loyalty Program include the ability
to track the number of students who attend the games and incorporate a
loyalty program.
The athletics department has been brainstorming the policy for two years.
Steve
White, athletics office assistant, and Samantha M. Stevens, director of
marketing and promotions for the athletic office, with help from other
members of the athletic department, were responsible for setting up the
new student ticketing policy.
White was in charge of the tickets while Stevens worked extensively on the loyalty program.
“We are trying to target non-revenue, non-ticket sports and increase student awareness of those sports,” Berry said.
There
will be rewards for students depending on the number of athletic events
they attend and the number of points they accumulate.
The prizes for points earned start at 10 points and go to 50 points, and then to the grand prize.
Students have mixed feelings about the new ticket policy.
“My
boyfriend loves football. He will go to all the games, but he is also a
junior chemistry major and he has labs. To pick up and go on a Tuesday,
Wednesday, or Thursday night to get ‘loyalty points’ isn’t realistic
for him, his major, or his academic performance,” junior advertising
major Mallori M. Morris said.
Sophomore business major Brandon P. Stallings said the new policy seems very inconvenient for students.
“It was easy to just swipe your card and walk in,” Stallings said.
Stallings also favors a first-come, first-serve policy with the distribution of big game tickets.
However, some students prefer a loyalty program.
“It
sounds like a pretty good policy. For the most loyal fans to go to the
big games makes sense,” sophomore undecided major M. Tilman Grigg said.
“Some students go to a big game just to go with their friends.”
Other
schools that use this program include the University of Maryland,
University of Pittsburg, and the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte.
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