UGA's Growing Problem with Student Ticket Scammers
- Brett Stephens
- May 5, 2023
- 7 min read
“I remember going to one of these chats and had a great conversation with someone looking to sell their CFP National Championship ticket. We even agreed for myself to send half of the money over, while I wait for him to send his ticket over. I never received that ticket, and I had to spend even more money to see my favorite team play in the biggest game ever. I lost over three-hundred dollars and still had to pay that much to get an actual ticket. It’s just unfortunate that I have to use this route to find students, like me, who want to see the Bulldogs play.”
- Alexander Torjak, a junior at UGA studying Mechanical Engineering
From the roars of screaming fans filling thousands of seats every Saturday, to the endless number of traditions carried out every game, football is more than just an event at colleges across the country: it’s a way of life.
Comprising 14 schools, the Southeastern Conference, more commonly known as the SEC, is a collegiate sports conference with some of the biggest universities. To maintain the demand of maintaining and growing these schools, one of the biggest revenue streams for the SEC is through broadcasting football games. Along with the other streams of income at athletic events, like concessions and ticket sales, college football games earn a lot of their revenue from streaming their games.
According to the Associated Press, the SEC earned a total of $721.8 million dollars from the 2022-23 season. The revenue earned from broadcasting these games are distributed evenly to the 14 schools in the conference, meaning each team in the SEC earned an average of $49.9 million.
The demand to attend these games continues to skyrocket among fans of college football, especially within the SEC. In a CBS Sports article released by Dennis Dodd on March 8, 2023, according to the NCAA, the average attendance for fans in 2022 was 76,667 attendees, which is the highest attendance among all other conferences. It is also the SEC’s highest average attendance since 2017. Regarding other conferences with their attendance for football games, the SEC sits at the top with a large gap between different conferences in the United States.
The three next conferences listed on fan attendance on average in 2022 are the Big Ten conference, with 67,295 fans, the Big 12 Conference with 59,783 fans, and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) with 48,714 fans.
The increase in demand can be attributed to several factors, with one of the biggest being to see talented college football teams facing off against the best teams in the country. Because of the desire to see football games in person, football tickets, particularly around college students, are very valuable and can be hard to acquire sometimes. Student football tickets are a high commodity, which can lead to ticket scalpers and scammers abusing college students, posing a massive threat to their security and their finances.
One of the teams in the SEC that draws interest from fans across the country to see play is the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Based in Athens, Georgia, the Georgia Bulldogs just won back-to-back College Football Playoff National Championships and continue to draw attention from fans all over the United States. Some of the biggest fans at UGA come from its students, with admission numbers rising every year for the past eight years.
According to U.S. News & World Report, in 2021, the University of Georgia had a population of 30,166 undergraduate students, which is an almost 8,000 student increase from 2015. As demand continues to increase to watch the Georgia Bulldogs play in Athens on Saturdays, what has not increased is the amount of student tickets distributed by the school. According to UGAWire, 16,000 tickets are given out to the student population at the University of Georgia. Jack, who is an employee of the UGA ticket office, explained who exactly gets
priority when attending home football games on campus.
“The freshmen will have priority for most of the home games. Most freshmen get pretty much all of the home games for the most part. The whole process starts in mid-August, that first week after school gets back, and then away games kind of come with that. You can request away games, and if you’re awarded them, then you get charged.”Jack, employee of the UGA ticket office
The signup for the packages through the university costs $60, which means each ticket costs $10 or $20, depending on the ticket package the student receives. If a student cannot attend a home game, they will receive a strike if their ticket is not scanned at the ticket gate, risking their chance to attend future football games if more strikes are accumulated.
According to Georgiadogs.com, the official website for the Georgia Bulldogs, students at UGA “…may sign-in to the [ticketing] website to view home games awarded and return/donate tickets to games they are unable to attend. Students who return/donate a ticket to a game they are unable to attend will NOT be given a ‘strike’ for that game.”
Students at UGA can donate their ticket to the UGA ticket donation portal, which can be distributed to another student who signs up for the donation pool. However, the student football ticket policy also includes a policy regarding ticket transfers among students.
“…student tickets may not be resold and are unable to be transferred. Any student attempting to sell student tickets will have their ticket privileges revoked.” UGA Athletic Association
Ticket privileges include not being able to sign up for post-season game tickets, including the SEC Championship and the College Football Playoff National Championship, as well as losing the ability to receive football tickets from the UGA ticket office for the following season.
“[The] ideal scenario would be an online interface where UGA students could resell and purchase UGA tickets for their preferred price. This would create a way for it all to be regulated and avoid scammers. I also think it would be neat to be able to be reimbursed for donated tickets rather than just losing the money.” George Moore, current UGA Student Government Association President
When a student donates their ticket to the UGA ticket donation pool, they do not receive the money they spent on the ticket. This reason leads many students to resort to selling their tickets through indirect methods, like various group chats containing hundreds of other students looking to do the same thing.
One of the main outlets to find other students looking to sell their tickets is through GroupMe. Founded in 2010, this messaging app is a popular choice in messaging others on a mobile device or a computer. At UGA, there are several “GroupMe’s” with hundreds of students all looking to find the best deal to see the Bulldogs compete at Sanford Stadium every Saturday in the fall. Some GroupMe chats can be made without users, like the UGA ticket swap chats, so there is no way to find the original owner of these chats.
However, that does not stop students from buying and selling tickets, with the chats’ members varying in size from a few hundred to a few thousand. Since the demand for UGA football games continues to skyrocket, resale prices for football tickets have grown exponentially compared to the original value of the ticket. Resale ticket prices for home football games can go from a few hundred dollars to upwards of almost $1,000 for a student ticket, which is a noticeable difference when looking at the original price point.
The bigger issue at hand is the amount of people in these group chats who scam UGA students and continue to profit off the lack of security and verification in these messaging groups. Scammers usually will steal photos of a student’s ID card at UGA and message other students posing as that person, when they could be a completely different person who may not even go to UGA.
Although there are not many adequate resources through the university itself, one business is looking to ensure safety for students buying and selling tickets. StudentSeats is an independent database that helps college students safely buy and sell tickets with each other. It was founded three years ago by John Ritondo and Jared Waller after they graduated in 2020 from the University of Alabama.
SEC member Alabama, like the University of Georgia, also has a student fan-community vulnerable to scammers in dozens of group chats. The two decided to act on these problems and founded the company StudentSeats, which has seen success in their first three years. They both have not made enough money off StudentSeats to run the business full-time, but are hoping to do so if the company continues to grow.
StudentSeats is currently partnered with over 30 schools across the country, like the University of Alabama, the University of Florida, Duke University, and more. Only schools with a specific student-to-student ticket transfer policy allow businesses, like StudentSeats, to function properly without legal repercussion.
The schools that Ritondo and Waller are operating presently have a growing population of users in in their few years running StudentSeats. For example, at their alma mater, StudentSeats has roughly 10,000 students at the University of Alabama who use their services. Jared Waller, the co-founder and CEO of StudentSeats, created a low-price fee system compared to other ticketing websites, like Ticketmaster, to entice college students to use their services.
According to an article released on June 20, 2022, by The Red & Black titled “UGA Athletic Association implements new student ticket policy,” the University of Georgia Athletic Association brought in changes regarding student tickets on February 1, 2023, with a prioritization in the class year of the student over credit hours. This was met with a 65% support rating based on a survey done by 1,472 students.
The UGAAA will reconsider this policy after February 1, 2026, but if no attention is brought on this issue by the UGA Student Government Association or policy makers within the athletics program, policies about student tickets cannot be reviewed prior to this date.
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