If you’re one of the thousands of students in a Clemson ticket exchange GroupMe, you’ve seen the asking prices for this year’s home games skyrocket. Upper and lower deck tickets, sold by Clemson for $25 and $40 each are tripling in price. And hill tickets, given away for free in the lottery, selling for nearly the same price.
Clemson is one of the few top football schools to still offer free tickets. Capacity is limited at the games, but the goal is to fill the stadium and support our Tigers – not to make a quick buck. If tickets are being given away for free, why are you selling yours?
This is not to say it is solely a student issue. Clemson should do something about the price of tickets and intervene to prevent prices from inflating too high. Ticketmaster, the new ticketing platform, offers resale markets for non-Clemson events and currently handles the transfer process for students.
What if Clemson offered a “buy-back” program rather than allowing direct transfers of tickets from student to student?
A lot of people have made the point that people do sell tickets to other events. I remember waking up my freshman year, looking out my dorm window and seeing campus dressed in orange as tens of thousands of people descended upon Clemson for a home game. I remember the excitement as kickoff grew closer and as I stood in the stands with my fellow Tigers.
I said to myself: these are the memories you’ll never forget. And these are memories we should all be able to have. Not because we have the money, but because we go to Clemson.
David Ferrara is a senior economics and philosophy major from Shelton, Connecticut. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @davidferrara23.