The athletics department at the University of Kentucky has launched a new video campaign to help deter ticket scalping for university athletic events. Accompanying the video campaign is a new webpage devoted to educating fans about ticket security.
Per an official university release, the new webpage will be regularly updated with information regarding ticket security and policies at UKathletics.com/ticketsecurity. The web page is also intended to assist fans in purchasing verified tickets and protect the tickets once purchased. The video can be seen below:
UK Athletics cautions fans against buying counterfeit tickets from unauthorized sellers. The UK Ticket Office can’t provide support for tickets purchased through unauthorized sellers, and reiterates on its new webpage that there are only five ticket outlets that are authorized to sell tickets to UK Athletics events:
- UK Athletics Ticket Office
- Ticketmaster or TicketExchange
- Rupp Arena Box Office
- ReplyBuy
- Visiting team/university’s ticket office
Tickets printed with “Student ID Required” are sold to full-time University of Kentucky students at an exclusive rate. For this reason, only UK students with their valid UK student ID are able to gain admission to the university’s Rupp Arena and Commonwealth Stadium with these tickets.
As is typically the case with other institutions, the general public can’t gain admission to events with student tickets. Fans purchasing tickets directly through one of UK’s five authorized ticket outlets are guaranteed they will not unintentionally purchase student tickets that require a student ID, an assurance that unauthorized sellers can’t provide.
Due to the ease of duplication and print-at-home tickets the university also implores fans to exercise caution if purchasing a printed ticket. With duplicate print-at-home tickets, only the first barcode to reach the gate will be scanned valid, while any subsequent, copied tickets with the same barcode will scan invalid and denied access.
At UK, all football and men’s basketball tickets are barcoded and will are scanned for validity at the gate. A recent trend that the university has seen is fans posting pictures of tickets, specifically the barcode, on social media. The university’s ticket security campaign also warns ticket holders to be aware of the potential risks of doing so. UK athletics is also using the hashtag #CoverTheCode to remind fans posting pictures of tickets online, to avoid taking screenshots that expose personal information like names, addresses or credit card information.
