YSU sells out of tickets for championship game

Latest ticket update (Thursday, Dec. 22, 9:30 a.m.): Prices are on the rise for the FCS Championship in Frisco. On Stubhub, prices start at $113 and go as high as $1,000. The NCAA Ticket Exchange has prices ranging from $90-$1,000.

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By Charles Grove

cgrove@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, will likely be more purple than red come Jan. 7 when Youngstown State University plays James Madison for the FCS national championship.

YSU announced Tuesday the university sold out its allotment of tickets. YSU officials are directing fans to www.NCAA.com, where prices range from $65-$1,000 per seat in a secondary marketplace after general public tickets sold out.

YSU was required to put a bid in for tickets right after its second-round win over Jacksonville State on Dec. 3, said YSU Sports Information Director Trevor Parks. YSU set aside $75,000 for the bid, which turned into 1,000 seats, which went quickly.

If YSU would have purchased seats that didn’t sell, the school would have been on the hook for them financially.

“You just had to try to get a feel for what makes sense,” Parks said. “You had to give them a number you knew you could meet.”

Because the seats sold out so quickly, only loge members and the highest tier of Penguin Club members were given the option to purchase seats before the 1,000 seats were sold.

Now many Penguin Club members and YSU students are forced to go to secondary markets such as the one though the NCAA website or sites such as StubHub! to gain entry to the national championship game.

YSU and James Madison each were allowed to bid for up to 4,000 seats. JMU bid the maximum and once they sold the first 4,000 seats, they requested the 3,000 seats YSU didn’t obtain, and Duke fans bought those up as well.

“JMU took everything they could get,” said Chase Kiddy, sports editor of The Page News and Courier in Page County, Va. “In 2011, JMU low-balled a home playoff game and was beat out by Eastern Kentucky. Ever since, they’ve been bullish about playoff bids of all types.”

James Madison’s official sections according to the James Madison Ticket Office’s Twitter account will be sections 100-107 and sections 128-133 while YSU’s sections will be sections 126 and 127.

The official capacity of Toyota Stadium is 20,500, but the capacity for the championship game will be less due to construction within the stadium.

Wesley Lucas, communications manager for the Frisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, said capacity has changed over the past weeks due to construction, but on Jan. 7 Toyota Stadium should seat “about 18,000.”

According to a news release Monday, YSU announced students could purchase a limited number of tickets Friday beginning at 9 a.m. at the YSU ticket office.

But those seats at the moment are gone, too, swallowed up in the initial 1,000.

But students may not be totally at the mercy of secondary ticket-purchasing websites yet.

Parks said YSU is still trying to work something out for students wanting to make the trip.

“We’re trying to get creative to find ways to get students to the game,” Parks said.