For many Quinnipiac students 10 p.m. usually means winding down from their day. But on Sunday, Feb. 21 and Monday, Feb. 22, 10 p.m. meant stress, aggravation and–for some–disappointment.
The tickets for the QU-Yale men’s ice hockey game became available on Glitnir Ticketing at 10 p.m. on Feb. 21, and the Fetty Wap Wake the Giant concert tickets went on sale, also on Glitnir, at 10 p.m. on Feb. 22.
With 1,200 tickets available for the QU-Yale game and 2,600 tickets available for the Wake the Giant concert, there is a large section of the student population who did not get tickets to at least one, if not both, events.
For most men’s ice hockey games, 1,000 student tickets are available, but an extra 200 standing-room only tickets are available for the QU-Yale game, according to the Executive Director of the TD Bank Sports Center Eric Grgurich. He said the tickets sold out in less than a minute.
With some students taking to social media to say the online ticketing system was not efficient, Grgurich said doing the tickets online is the best solution.
“It’s the fairest way to do it,” Grgurich said. “Otherwise you have people waiting, people missing class, people at internships and clinicals.”
Chris Mule, a first-year graduate student in the 4+1 MBA program, did not get a QU-Yale ticket. He said the ticket system is the biggest issue when it comes to big events like this game.
“My main issue is that it is such a bad system in place,” Mule said. “I have never had the opportunity to go to a Yale game here because of the system and especially in my last year here I really wanted to go.”
Grgurich said they have done in-person tickets sales in the past at 8 a.m. which resulted in people skipping classes, trying to get multiple tickets for friends and roommates and some other issues. He said putting the tickets online allows for a fair lottery system.
Tickets for the QU-Yale game have already made their way onto websites like StubHub. There are student general admission tickets and faculty tickets listed on StubHub with prices ranging from $74.99 to $230.
Junior Riya Patel thinks it’s unfair that some students generate their QU-Yale ticket just to sell them at excessive prices, despite not having paid for the ticket themselves.
“There are people who want to go to the game but cannot because some students that are just getting tickets just so that they can sell them for more,” Patel said.
During the time for the QU-Yale tickets some students had issues, but Grgurich said the website did not crash. Since so many students were accessing the website at the same time to get tickets, there was an influx of people that caused the website to function at a slower rate.
But during the sales for the Wake the Giant spring concert tickets, the Glitnir Ticketing website did crash, according to Ticket Manager Matthew Calcagni.
Despite issues with Internet typically being blamed on BobcatNet by students, Calcagni said BobcatNet was not to blame this time. Calcagni said there was a limit placed on the back end of the Glitnir Ticketing website for how many students could have a ticket in their cart at the same time.
The interest was more than the system limit could handle, Calcagni said. During the ticket sales, they had to go back into the system and allot for more students to purchase tickets at the same time.
Calcagni said the Wake the Giant tickets sold out in an hour but Alex LaMagna, mainstage chair of SPB, said students were able to get tickets until 3 a.m.
Many students attempting to purchase tickets saw messages about a high volume of customers on the site at that time, according to Calcagni.
“In terms of setting up online sales, it was the first time that we had quite that volume,” Calcagni said. “On that side of it, the back end [of the website] wasn’t set up correctly to accommodate the interest because there’s such a great interest for Fetty Wap.”
Senior diagnostic imagine major Lauren Varriale did not get a QU-Yale ticket or a Fetty Wap ticket. She said she would be willing to buy a ticket from someone else selling a Fetty Wap ticket.
“I would consider buying one,” Varriale said. “I wouldn’t spend over $25 because that is what they are originally being sold for.”
This was not the first Wake the Giant concert done entirely online. Tickets for Jason Derulo was completely online last year with the same system, according to LaMagna. Calcagni said in the past the Wake the Giant concert has not been well-attended, but because of this year’s volume of interest, he expects SPB will reconsider doing solely online sales for tickets next year. However, LaMagna said 2,000 students attended last year’s Jason Derulo concert.
There was an error in the system that allowed some students to purchase more than two tickets, according to a post from the Quinnipiac University Student Programming Board Facebook page.
“Due to high volume of traffic on the server last night [Feb. 22], a glitch occurred that allowed some students to purchase more than [two] tickets,” the Facebook post said. “These students are currently being emailed and refunded to rectify the situation. These tickets will then be put back into circulation at a later date.”
CORRECTION: This article was corrected to add additional information from SPB Mainstage Chair Alex LaMagna, including the fact that SPB had online tickets last year and that students were able to get Fetty Wap tickets until 3 a.m.
