MU-KU student ticket prices cause confusion

Students who paid $35 for tickets will receive $25 back.

By Joey Soto

Published Nov. 3, 2008

Freshman Patrick Miller sat at his computer Oct. 23 in anticipation of purchasing the best MU-KU football tickets he could get as a student season ticket holder.

But after waiting in line for more than three and a half hours Saturday morning, Miller said he was not pleased to find his purchase of the most expensive tickets available did not actually provide better quality seating.

Two price levels for tickets were sold to students, one at $35 and the other at $10. Within minutes of the start of ticket sales, the higher priced tickets sold out.

"The $35 ticket I got was 15 rows back in the upper deck, and I'm two seats over from someone who paid $10," Miller said. "There are people in the first level that only paid $10 for their tickets. I was pretty mad."

The confusion between ticket prices and quality came as a result of several problems in the process of ticket sales, MU athletic department spokesman Chad Moller said.

An e-mail sent out to student season ticket holders appeared to be clear that there was a distinction between the varying prices of tickets.

"If you want to sit with friends, please be sure that everyone has purchased a ticket at the same price level," the e-mail stated. "There will be no refunds or exchanges."

Contrary to that e-mail, students who purchased both price levels were able to sit together, with no distinct area allocated for students who purchased the more expensive tickets.

"We're certainly sorry for any confusion," Moller said. "It didn't go as planned. Certainly the motives were good in that we wanted to get more of our students to the game."

As part of a contract with the Kansas City Chiefs, both MU and KU were given 3,000 tickets to sell to students for $10. Considering the record numbers in attendance this year at MU football games, MU officials decided they wanted to give their students more of an opportunity to go to the game, Moller said.

"We knew we'd have more student interest than that and our students have been outstanding this year so we wanted to do something to get them more tickets," Moller said. "So we bought another 1,000 for students at $35 apiece."

Originally, the $10 tickets were to be sold first as if a discount to the first 3,000 fans to purchase their tickets. After those sold out, the $35 tickets were to be sold to students who missed out on purchasing tickets, Moller said.

The problem arose when the company MU outsourced the ticket sales to put all the tickets up for sale simultaneously, resulting in student confusion as to the higher priced tickets being of better quality.

"It wasn't communicated properly how things were going to be broken down and the execution of the sales didn't go as planned," Moller said.

Moller said he realizes why students may have been confused when purchasing their tickets online.

Missouri Students Association President Jim Kelley, MSA Vice President Chelsea Johnson and Brenna Noble of the Intercollegiate Athletic Standing Committee met with Athletic Director Mike Alden Monday morning to discuss and discover possible solutions to the problem.

"Students thought they were paying for something they really didn't get," Kelley said. "Mike Alden has decided that it would be best for those 1,000 students to get their $25 back so every student is paying $10 for their ticket."