While many students arrive to games at the TD Bank Sports Center by swiping their Q-card, there is also a new online system in place for students to reserve tickets for games that are expected to be high in attendance.
According to the Group Sales and Promotions Manager at TD Bank Sports Center David Caprio, many students are unaware of this system and there has already been some confusion.
For instance, many students thought the men’s basketball game against Yale earlier in the year was sold out of student tickets. Caprio said that rumor was false.
“There was a game against Yale earlier in the year where people were saying it was sold out. That wasn’t the case,” Caprio said. “I don’t even know how that rumor started. There’s only going to be certain events where it’s a ‘don’t come up here’ like were done, set.”
The system was created mainly for the bigger games of the year (Yale, Robert Morris), but Caprio said student attendance can still be higher and that it’s meant to help students.
“I’m not sure why, but we do want to make sure that it was clear to the students that this was meant to be an easy thing,” Caprio said. “We feel student attendance should be higher.”
Caprio isn’t so sure what the main reason why students don’t have accounts, but one reason could be is that they do not know how to activate the accounts.
“I don’t know if it’s not reading the email, not getting the email, or just not understanding exactly what’s in the email,” Caprio said. “So the purpose of this was in the more places it’s in, the more easy access it is to get to.”
Another reason could be that this is the first year ticket registration has been used. Under its first year, there has been issues with the system.
“It’s a new system for us, not just for the students,” Caprio said. “We’ve even had some issue with our season ticket holders. It’s more like miscommunication.”
The ticket system was formed through a website called Glitter. The IT gave every students’ email address to the website at the beginning of the year. The way students can activate their account is “first name.last [email protected].” Many students use their initials in the email but that is not the correct way to register for this particular account.
Caprio used a class of students as an experiment to see how many of them activated their accounts. The goal was to print out a ticket for a Holiday Dinner. Out of all the kids in the class, only one student came in with a ticket.
There is currently a video that teaches students how to activate their ticket registration accounts. Caprio said he uses a thing called “CamTasia” where the computer takes a screen shot and it helps you from there.
“We just kinda want to see where’s the disconnect,” Caprio said. “We’re trying to make it sound like it’s a week-to-week thing.”
In case you cannot activate your ticket account, students can use their Q-card instead. Caprio said that if the student has not activated their account yet, they could go to the arena and swipe their Q-cards to act as tickets.
“You could bring your Q-card and swipe it in which acts as a ticket, or you could get a ticket ahead of time,” Caprio said. “The whole point of it was meant to be easy access. I don’t think it’s being portrayed that way, I just want to make sure people understand that. We want this to be as easy as possible.”
Since many students swipe their Q-cards and have not activated their ticket accounts, Caprio still will not take away that ability.
“We do want to keep the option to swipe in with the card,” Caprio said. “Right now the reservation is a safe guard.”
