The price of watching Ohio State football in the Horseshoe or men’s basketball at the Schottenstein Center is likely to rise next season.
The OSU Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote Jan. 31 on whether to approve proposed ticket price increases for both sports.
Should the measure be approved, football ticket prices will be increased by $9 per home football game for the general public. The measure, however, will also create the option of designating up to two games per year as “Premier Games,” for which public tickets could be priced between $79 and maximums of $125 and $150 for the two games, or a maximum $175 for a single game.
Student football ticket pricing would not be subject to Premier Game increases, but would be increased by $2 per game to $34, according to the Board’s meeting schedule.
The football ticket increase would be the first implemented since 2010, when public tickets were increased by $7, faculty/staff tickets were increased by $4 and student tickets were increased by $1.
The price of men’s basketball tickets would also go up. For in-conference home games, Personal Seat Licenses (PSL) and public lower bowl tickets would increase by $6 per game to $46, while public upper bowl tickets would increase by $4 to $22.
Currently, Ticketmaster.com lists public lower bowl tickets at $40 and public upper bowl tickets at $18.
Faculty/staff tickets for home games would also be increased by $4.50 for lower bowl tickets and $3 for upper bowl tickets. According to OhioStateBuckeyes.com, the current faculty/staff package can range from $470 to $132, depending on if the package is for the entire slate of home games or a split of certain non-conference and in-conference home games.
Student tickets would be increased by $1 for all seat locations. OSU’s current Student Season Package, which includes nine games, costs $123, according to OhioStateBuckeyes.com.
The measure would also implement the Premier Game option for up to five conference or non-conference basketball games. For those games, PSLs would increase to $47, public lower bowl tickets to $46, public upper bowl tickets to $25, faculty/staff lower bowl tickets to $37, faculty/staff upper bowl tickets to $20 and student tickets to $13 per game.
The price for non-conference games will not be increased for next season, with the exception of games designated as Premier Games.
The proposal included in the meeting schedule acknowledges “rising operating costs” for next fiscal year as a reason for the proposed price increases. According to the Board of Trustees meeting schedule, OSU is one of “few” institutions in the nation whose athletics programs are self-sustaining, meaning that they do not use funds from non-athletics sources for athletics funding, and the majority of the university’s athletics revenue comes from football and men’s basketball.
The measure also proposes increased membership fees for the OSU Golf Club. Annual membership dues would increase by 1.5 percent for alumni/affiliates, faculty/staff, student and affiliate family membership categories. Daily green fees would not be increased by the measure.
