Glass announces new seating plan

Fred Glass, athletics director, announced a revamped priority points system for determining student seating at men’s basketball games beginning this season.

The system aims to reward student loyalty with prime seats for premium home games.

Students will receive five points for each set of season tickets they have purchased for football or men’s basketball while at IU, with a maximum of 10 points per year.

Students with the most priority points will be given seats in the lower bowl of Assembly Hall for highly anticipated home games.

This season’s ACC/Big Ten Challenge matchup against North Carolina will be the first such game with the lower bowl seats going to the approximately 3,900 season ticket holders with the most priority points.

A loyalty point system has also been implemented that tracks how consistently students actually use their tickets. Loyalty points will determine which students can purchase tickets for postseason games.

On June 28, the athletic department announced it would cap the number of student season tickets sold at 12,400 and that students would receive tickets to 10 of the team’s 16 home games during the academic calendar.

Glass said since then, there has been an increased push from students for assurances of tickets to certain games for students who have purchased tickets consistently in the past.

“I think it had been a bit of a murmur until the student section was oversold and then it became a loud cry,” Glass said.

The new system came about after meetings between Glass, Indiana University Student Association, the Student Athletic Board and the ticketing office.

“When the sellout status of the student section first came out, students had some concerns and said, ‘Can’t you figure out some way for students to be rewarded?’” Glass said. “We started working on it internally and floated the idea by the SAB and they gave us some ideas.”

Glass said he is working with the ticketing and bursar’s offices in the hopes that student ticket sales will not be capped next year. However, he said the fact that capping sales was necessary this year is a positive sign.

“This is good news that we’ve got the challenge of being oversubscribed and have students coming out and going to the games,” Glass said. “I think this priority system is a good way to reward our most loyal students.”