A new Apple update tied student tickets to University of Connecticut students’ Apple ID’s and will disable ticket sharing, according to the UConn Athletics department.
“Unfortunately, we saw a growing trend of students claiming tickets for the sole purpose of selling them to other students or the general public,” said William Peterson, UConn’s assistant athletic director for communications. “The idea of students profiting from free tickets is contrary to the intent of the offering.”
One seventh-semester UConn student, who agreed to speak to The Daily Campus under the condition of anonymity, said he used the student tickets to bring a small group of UConn alumni into the games for free.
“I’ve been here for four years now, and I’ve never had a problem sharing tickets,” the student said. Then, in an October men’s basketball game, the ticket he got on his own ticketing portal was disabled one hour before the game began.
“I got my own student ticket through my own accord,” the student said when explaining that he got a paper ticket when coordinating with the ticket desk. Another one of his friends couldn’t end up going after a ticket they received from a friend who couldn’t attend anymore was disabled the night before.
The student said that his friend’s ticket was disabled after it was shared between Apple accounts when the original recipient couldn’t end up making it to the game.
“I feel like if someone can’t go to the game then they should be able to share the ticket,” the student said. The new update makes student tickets non-transferable and is Apple-mandated, according to a UConn Athletics email.
The update from Apple was intended to prevent “screenshot fraud activity and unauthorized sharing,” by verifying the Apple Account is associated with the UConn Athletics Ticket Account which made the purchase. This will be accomplished by Face ID, Touch ID or the device’s password.
“[W]e experienced multiple situations where unwitting buyers of student tickets couldn’t enter the arena based on issues with ticket scanning,” Peterson said. “[B]uyers from the public were disappointed to learn upon arriving the arena that the seats they purchased were in the general admission student seating area.”
The UConn student who had their pass disabled also said he felt that unauthorized sharing and fraudulent sales of student tickets was becoming a problem.
“Some people ruin it for everybody,” the student said. He added that he’d see tickets listed on sale for hundreds of dollars soon after he missed his chance to get a student ticket. “It is really frustrating because as a student it’s almost impossible to get a ticket for games.”
The UConn Athletics department sent out a reminder about the student ticketing updates in an email on Tuesday, where they addressed the possibility for students to safely transfer tickets to each other in the future.
“We will continue to examine industry trends and current technologies in an effort to make the student ticketing process as efficient and customer-friendly as possible,” the email said.
The update called “Apple account binding” has been used across other universities as well, like the University of Virginia, to crack down on fraud occurring through student ticket transactions.
In an August 2025 informational memo about the program, Virginia Sports said that students could give tickets to family and friends using the official transfer feature in the UVAtix account.
In a statement made with ticket administrators, Peterson said that he wanted students to understand why the security systems were placed. “We want students to understand that our intent is not to inhibit but to protect.”
The statement said that the current procedures were just launched, and the athletics department will continue to search for the best possible way to serve fans and students of UConn games.