KU releases draft season-ticket plan

Kansas University’s athletic department on Friday released a preliminary draft of a point-based formula for distributing next season’s supply of men’s basketball season tickets.

“This is only tentative — I can’t say that enough,” said KU athletic director Lew Perkins. “It could change a thousand times between now and when it’s finished.”

As proposed, the formula assigns points for past and current-year donations, past season-ticket purchases, and membership in the KU Alumni Association.

Donors with the most points will be assigned the best seats.

“This is all about fairness and generating income,” Perkins said, noting that while KU has the third-highest enrollment in the Big 12 Conference, its athletics budget — about $25 million a year — ranks eighth in the conference.

It’s not known how many points will be needed to secure prime seats.

“At this point, we’ve not even begun to add up people’s points, so, really, there’s no way to know,” said Jim Marchiony, associate athletic director for external affairs. “But it’s clear that to get a very good seat, you’re going to have to be a donor.”

Both Marchiony and Perkins denied persistent rumors that donors will be expected to put up $5,000 per ticket.

“No one is saying you’re going to have to put up $5,000 to get a seat in Allen Fieldhouse,” Marchiony said.

He said the process for deciding how many tickets donors will be allowed to buy remained undecided.

Ticket priority system The Kansas University Athletic Corp. announced a draft of the point system that will determine who receives KU men’s basketball season tickets. The account with the highest number of points will receive the top seats. Each account earns: ¢ 1 point for every $100 donated to KUAC since July 1, 1978.¢ 2 points per sport, per year of purchasing season tickets since fall 1984.¢ 2 points per year of donating to the Williams Educational Fund since July 1, 1978 (minimum of $25 per year).¢ 10 points if a KU graduate (one time only, regardless of number of degrees earned).¢ 10 points if a member of KU Alumni Association (one time only).¢ 10 points if a member of K-Club (one time only).¢ 1 bonus point per $100 gift to KUAC in the current fiscal year.

“That’s still being discussed,” he said.

Perkins said that to prevent favoritism, data for calculating point totals will be fed “blind” into a computer.

“When the list comes out, it’ll be in code; it won’t be a name,” Perkins said. “None of us will know who falls where on the list.”

He presented the proposed point system Thursday evening to about 40 members of the department’s Athletic Ticket Advisory Committee.

“We asked them to go back and show the plan to their friends, talk about it and get back to us,” Marchiony said. “We want to know what they think.”

Committee members include KU administrator and state Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence; former athletes Lynette Woodard, Mike Maddox, Danny Manning, John Hadl and David Jaynes; former football coach Don Fambrough; and KU Endowment Association President Dale Seuferling.

Plans call for the group meeting again in the next couple of weeks, Marchiony said, noting the plan would be amended and adopted “soon after that.”

The point system will be used to distribute 9,000 season tickets, not including the 7,000 tickets set aside for faculty, staff, retirees and students.

The system will be open to anyone who’s a member of the athletic department’s Williams Fund. It will not be limited to current season-ticket holders.

“There are lots of ways to accumulate points,” Marchiony said. “But you won’t be able to activate those points until or unless you’re a Williams Fund member — a minimum donation of $100.”

Points will be recalculated and seats will be re-assigned each year.

The current system — an ill-defined process tied to Williams Fund membership and timely payment — is unfair and does not generate the income it could, Perkins said.

“The bad thing in all this is that it should have been done 10 years ago,” Perkins said. “The good thing is that we now have the opportunity to look at other programs, see what we like and make them fit with the program here.”

Since arriving at KU last year, Perkins said he’d been bothered by the current system’s tendency to exclude fans willing to donate more than ticket holders who contribute little or nothing to the Williams Fund.

“The way it is now — if you’re a student who hasn’t missed a single game in four years and you graduate, it may be 10 years before you get a chance to buy a season ticket,” he said. “That’s not fair.”

KU geology professor Don Steeples serves on the Athletic Ticket Advisory Committee. He attended the meeting Thursday.

“I came away very impressed,” Steeples said. “Several suggestions were made and taken into consideration.

“When the dust settles, I think most people, overall, are going to be satisfied. Of course, when you’re dealing with umpteen thousand season-ticket holders, you’re not going to satisfy everybody.”