The Ohio State University Board of Trustees on Thursday approved an athletic department initiative to alter the way it raises scholarship funds through football ticketing.
According to a university media release, the athletic department proposed increasing the number of price zones home football tickets from two to six for the 2022 football season and assigning per-game prices for each of the six zones. Providing more variability for ticket prices opens up Ohio Stadium to more kinds of fans and is in line with peer universities, the university stated.
The current two-price-zone seating configuration will remain for the upcoming football season, and season ticket prices will not be increased for the second straight year.
The changes for the 2022 season are part of a Buckeye Club ticket modernization plan to create a more transparent and equitable model, which will allow for more affordable prices for many season-ticket holders – including about 14,000 seats that can be purchased with no annual giving contribution – as well as more opportunities to purchase tickets, according to the release.
The new process centers on the Buckeye Club’s transition to a per-seat contribution model, which is used successfully by peer schools around the country and will generate additional donations to fund student-athlete scholarships.
“In its simplest form, what it’s doing is shifting from an annual donation model to qualify for tickets to a per-seat donation model,” Brett Scarbrough, an associate athletic director for ticketing and premium seating, told The Columbus Dispatch.
