There is no doubt that LSU football is the hottest ticket in town Saturday nights during the fall semester. Sometimes that ticket is such a hot commodity that even non-students want to get in on the action. That requires students with football tickets who wish to spread the wealth to non-students to go through the ticket upgrading process. To upgrade a student ticket to a student guest ticket, students must visit the ticket office on the first floor of the Athletic Administration Building. Brian Broussard, ticket manager, said he has heard of some confusion among students as to exactly what the ticket upgrading process does. “It’s never been to give you two tickets,” Broussard said. “It just changes the ticket you have in your possession to where anyone can use it.” Broussard said the price to upgrade a student ticket amounts to the difference between the price of the student ticket and the price of a general admission ticket for that particular game. The price of a seven-game season ticket package for students this season totaled $84, or $12 per game. Guest general admission tickets for this Saturday’s game against Middle Tennessee State are $40, meaning students who wish to upgrade their tickets for this weekend’s game must pay an additional $28 to do so. Broussard said there have been problems this season with students illegally trying to scalp tickets through Web sites such as eBay.com. A quick search of “LSU football tickets” on the Web site returns more than 90 different search results. Broussard said the University keeps an eye on illegal ticket scalping. “We monitor to the best of our ability any ticket selling sites,” he said. “If we can identify who it is, we’ll cancel their student ticket for the rest of the year and possibly turn that person into the Dean of Students office or the police department.” He said a handful of students have already been reprimanded for such offenses. This season, the Athletic Department has limited student ticket upgrades to 500 per game, all of which were used for LSU’s 48-7 win this past weekend against Virginia Tech. Broussard said there are approximately 200 upgrades remaining for each of the Tigers’ home contests against South Carolina, Florida and Auburn. While student ticket upgrades provide some flexibility for non-students who want to attend home football games, the process of actually getting a ticket upgraded can be hectic. Kara D’Amico, fashion merchandise senior, said she stood in line at the ticket office for two hours Sept. 4 to upgrade her student ticket for the Virginia Tech game. She said she was eventually successful in upgrading the ticket, but the waiting is something she would not want to deal with again. “I think people started getting there at 5 a.m.,” D’Amico said. “You just stood in line forever, and it moved very slowly.” She said while the process is beneficial overall, there are still some kinks in the system that need to be worked out. “They didn’t even require that you show your ID,” D’Amico said. “There was a girl behind me that was getting her and her friend’s tickets upgraded, which to me seems unfair.”
—-Contact Tyler Batiste at [email protected]