Okay, the Pitt-Duke game at Madison Square Garden has Pitt making some tickets available to the big boosters, but the general ticket sales will start next week.
Pitt was allotted 3,000 tickets, which it plans to sell to Panther Club members. If tickets remain, Pitt will open sales to its season-ticket holders for all sports and to alumni association members Oct. 22, but not to the general public.
Duke is selling tickets through its Web site (www.goduke.com). Associate athletic director Mike Cragg said Duke’s ticket sales are usually restricted to Duke alumni and donors for neutral-site games, although he did not know the specifics for the Dec. 20 game or whether Pitt fans would be able to get tickets through Duke.
For now, it appears Pitt fans must wait until Madison Square Garden has its general sale. MSG is expected to begin selling tickets to the game next week. Fans can call Ticketmaster or go to msg.com to purchase tickets at that time.
Even though the game is being played at a neutral site, Duke is the de facto home team. The Blue Devils were given the majority of tickets to sell for the game.
Duke has an arrangement with MSG to play in New York or New Jersey every year. This is the fifth consecutive year Duke is playing at Madison Square Garden or the Meadowlands.
So there’s your ticket update for that game.
Over at College Basketball FanHouse I took a look a brief look at all 16 Big East schedules. The Pitt schedule snippet is here.
Another Big East topic I just put on FanHouse seems worth mentioning here.
Last month the Big East changed hosting organizations as it looks to get into more broadband multimedia stuff. They went with a company called JumpTV that is has really done a solid job with soccer content worldwide. Actually sounds like a good strategy.
The problem for the Big East is that all the media rights for football and basketball were granted to ESPN until 2013 under the latest contract. That’s why, even for football games that ESPN regional doesn’t even broadcast, no one else can pick up or show. Including the member schools on webcasts. ESPN holds the rights and as a policy doesn’t release them. I’ve pointed out how shortsighted this approach was back when the contract was announced.
That means most live events or even sporting events you could watch later on your computer are limited to field hockey and soccer. The best they offer for the marquee sports are highlights, audio broadcasts of the Big East game of the week, the weekly audio teleconferences between the media and Big East coaches (formerly free) and video interviews from the media day events. Oh, and the press conferences during the Big East Tournament. Whee.
For the full package they want people to pay $79.95 a year. Or $9.95 a month. You can buy football or basketball specific packages for $25. Yet the actual live or even archived video football/basketball game content is nil and won’t be changing for some time.
Quite the waste. It’s also worth noting that the Big East still doesn’t get online dealings. I actually made an effort to contact the Big East to find out more about the program. Whether, perhaps, there was any attempt to work out something with ESPN to loosen the restrictions. You would think with a new program and a questionable price point they would want to do what they could to sell and promote this to the hardcore junkies who actually spend a fair amount of time with online and broadband content. I actually waited a few weeks before doing the post hoping to give the other side of this.
Instead, silence. No response. Not even bothering with a form e-mail. It’s like they are just now realizing how stupid their deal on this front is and don’t really want to let people know about how little they offer.
