Responding to student demand, the University of Missouri athletics department has announced it will implement a new system for student tickets based on loyalty starting in the fall of 2026.
As reported by the Columbia Missourian, students who attend home games will earn loyalty points for doing so. Points will be tracked on a leaderboard, and students at the top of the leaderboard will receive priority when purchasing football and basketball tickets.
Mizzou Athletics said that it is working on implementing a system where point totals are displayed publicly, allowing students to know where they rank against others. Barring that plan, the athletics department at least will share rankings via email.
“We reward students who actively support Mizzou Athletics,” the Mizzou Athletics website states.
Students won’t need to buy tickets to get into baseball, gymnastics, volleyball, softball, women’s basketball, wrestling, soccer, golf, tennis, swim and dive, track and field or cross country events. Attending these games earns loyalty points and requires only a student ID upon entry.
The number of points attached to a student’s name at the start is decided by seniority, with seniors getting priority then juniors, sophomores and freshmen.
Football and men’s basketball have slightly different processes for securing a ticket, the Columbia Missourian reported.
For each of the seven home football games, a window to request a ticket opens eight days before gameday and ends three days later. In that window, students will make an official request for a ticket.
Once the window closes, every request will be sorted onto a list ranked by number of loyalty points. An email, text and push notification will be sent out to those who made the cut and are awarded the chance to buy a ticket. Those who have been selected to buy a ticket will have 24 hours to do so once they receive a link to the purchasing portal. If, after that 24-hour period, there are tickets remaining, they will be offered to the next-highest point earner that didn’t make the original cut.
Tickets, which can only be purchased on a single-game basis, will range from $10 to $50, according to Mizzou Athletics.
Men’s basketball will follow a similar process to what was used this year, according to the Missourian. There still will be blocks of games released one at a time. Students will be alerted to the release of blocks by text, email and push notifications. Once a block is released, the top loyalty-point holders will have a 72-hour window to purchase tickets. After the window closes, the tickets are made available to the rest of the student body.
For certain high-demand games, the football model will be implemented. Students will request a ticket, and tickets will be allocated based on point rankings. Mizzou Athletics has not released which games will fall under which pricing models.
Some men's basketball games will remain free to enter. Some games will cost between $5 and $30.
"Mizzou Athletics is making these changes after student backlash over the lottery model used in the 2025-26 academic year," Thomas Sullivan and Bella Morgan of the Missourian reported. "On its website, Mizzou Athletics says students were frustrated over lotteries they had no control over. They also didn’t like waiting in queues to find out if they got a ticket or not.
"The athletic department saw the need to change the system after collecting data from student surveys. The department conducted workshops with a student-ticketing advisory group to 'rebuild the process from the ground up.' ”
