There is nothing that makes this campus go into a frenzy like basketball season, especially those few opportunities we get to see our favorite teams play against great competition here at Gampel Pavilion or the XL Center in Hartford. It’s one of the unique privileges of this university that we are able to attend such events almost entirely for free. At other schools across the country student tickets can cost an arm and a leg in comparison. The University of Michigan asks students for $190 for home game season tickets. Marquette and Seton Hall, two of UConn’s Big East foes, want $150 for the same. In many schools that are more football dominant, such as the University of South Carolina, the University of Washington, Penn State University or Ohio State University, season tickets for those games can frequently cost up to or more than $200. Now, are these insane prices for multiple high-level Division I games? No, but the fact that at the University of Connecticut we have eliminated any extra cost barrier to attending most games is good. The only problem? I swear to God, I don’t think some of you people deserve it.
I’m specifically talking about student ticket resellers, one of the worst phenomena to hit UConn sports since Caitlin Clark last year in the Final Four. These are people who are price gouging the tickets they received for free and preventing other fans from seeing the team. I believe that this is one of the worst crimes you can commit at this school and I’m tired of how little it is talked about.
To start, I get it: we’re all college students and money is a struggle. However, this excuse doesn’t really cut it either way when it comes to justifying this act. There are better options than up charging by $50 or more to get income and lowering ourselves to that standard is not the solution. For those that don’t charge that much, is $15 really a substantial enough amount to use money issues as an excuse? No.
The thing is that there is no labor put in to get these tickets; it’s ultimately a complete matter of luck. I understand that you can do your best to get in the online queue earlier than others and make sure to refresh your page exactly when the time is right to be the first to load up into the queue, but the fact of the matter is that with the sheer number of people attempting to get tickets and the complicating factor of technology, it’s ridiculous to chalk this up to a matter of skill or being the most “deserving.” As such, there’s no good reason to be able to charge for more than you got it. Nobody loses anything from giving away a ticket except the potential for more money that they’ve done nothing to get.
So then, what should students do if they get a ticket but can’t go to a game? Give it away for free. There are always students who are left out of games because they don’t get tickets, and depriving them of the experience, especially for those of us who are graduating soon, is frankly very selfish. There is an opportunity to be kind, to be generous and to help out the community around you, if only we’re willing to give up on money which technically isn’t even ours.
On a larger scale, it’s also worth exploring what UConn could do to erase this issue from its community. UConn athletics claims that tickets are not transferable, but in actuality, every student knows it’s incredibly easy to beat the system. There should be more verification when it comes to entering games that requires people to actually have the ticket attached to their name. There needs to be a higher penalty on students who repeatedly buy tickets and don’t show up. Alternatively, if we refuse to give up this marketplace for tickets that we’ve created, UConn should regulate it more and create an official place that can at the very least get rid of scammers.
Overall, I strongly urge all students to consider taking another route when they get a ticket they plan on using. Don’t let yourselves fall victim to excess greed or selfishness. Give your tickets away.