понедельник, 24 сентября 2012 г.

TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE THE UW ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT WEB SITE OFFERS A SECURE PLACE FOR DONORS TO SELL TICKETS.(SPORTS) - The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI)

Byline: ANDY BAGGOT abaggot@madison.com 608-252-6175

An online market place is being established for University of Wisconsin season ticket-holders who want to sell or purchase game tickets.

Corbin Hunt, the UW assistant athletic director for ticket sales, said Wednesday a system that allows Badger Fund members to exchange tickets and forward them electronically to another party, will be up and running today.

'We're using this as a donor benefit,' he said. 'We've often heard from donors that this sort of an exchange process would be a great benefit to them. We know it happens all the time on other Web sites and obviously in other ways. It's very important to us that we be able to offer that to our donors in a secure way.'

Access to the service is available at the UW Athletic Department Web site (www.uwbadgers.com). Locate the link entitled 'ticket information' on the left side of the screen and follow it to the appropriate site.

Only Badger Fund members are eligible for the service, which requires a UW patron number as well as a pin number. Hunt said a goal of the service is to attract more fans to the Badger Fund, which has approximately 15,000 participants.

Hunt said the service is currently limited to UW men's basketball and men's hockey season ticket-holders because the Kohl Center has electronic ticket scanners. He said he hopes to have a similar scanning system at Camp Randall Stadium next season in order to accommodate UW football season ticket-holders.

'If you have season tickets and you're a donor, you have the opportunity to take either all (your tickets) or a portion and if you're not going to use (them), you could put it on our Web site and actually sell it to somebody,' Hunt said.

The benefit to selling UW tickets in this way is that they will not be sold above face value and the authenticity of the ticket is assured.

'We're not allowing an auction-style or any kind of a higher price (for tickets),' Hunt said.

Those who sell their tickets through UW will receive an 85 percent credit of the ticket's resale value. Hunt said credit card and delivery fees account for most of the remaining 15 percent.

'It's becoming more common,' Hunt said of the service, which can be found at schools such as Oklahoma and Virginia. 'It's another opportunity to provide some benefit to your donors.

'There's a lot of this going on. People are not always out there looking to make a lot of extra money on their seats. They want to get them in the hands of other fans -- our fans, real fans -- so that provides this opportunity.'

When there is an exchange of tickets, they can be forwarded online from one party to the other even in another city. Once a party receives the tickets, they can be printed out at home and used at the prescribed event.

'Basically it's a chance for people to e-mail their tickets to another person,' Hunt said. 'We're pretty excited about that.'