Ticket glitch puts students on sidelines

A technical glitch prevented some University of Florida students from getting tickets to next month's Southeastern Conference championship football game.

While UF and Ticketmaster officials apologized Tuesday for the mistake, they said little could be done to rectify the situation.

"There's no way we can open up sales for tickets we don't have," said Mark Gajda, director of ticket operations for the University Athletic Association.

"It's a no-win situation for us," he added.

Tickets for the Dec. 6 game, which pits UF against the University of Alabama, went on sale to students Monday at 6 p.m. Students who attempted to buy tickets online were confronted by a programming error on the Ticketmaster Web site. The site provided only one option, international delivery, for tickets.

"It was absolute human error," said Albert Lopez, a Ticketmaster spokesman.

The error meant students were unable to choose the U.S. as their country of origin on a subsequent screen. Students either had to pick another country or were timed out, knocking them out of the system.

"People were putting in random countries like Afghanistan, Bolivia and the Virgin Islands," said UF senior John Sacks.

Sacks said he picked "U.S. Minor Outlying Islands" because it sounded closest to the truth. But the choice didn't match his existing credit card information stored on the site, he said, so he was timed out of the system without tickets.

Gajda said there's no way of knowing how many students were affected, but the entire student allocation of about 1,500 tickets for the game was issued. Students who listed another country should have no problem picking up tickets, he said.

Students who missed out will have a chance Dec. 5 at 8:30 a.m. to purchase any tickets that haven't been bought, he said.

This season marks the first time that UF has used Ticketmaster to distribute tickets to away games. Previously, students obtained tickets over the phone.

Gajda said the association will meet with Ticketmaster and evaluate whether to continue the arrangement.

"What you don't want to do is pull the trigger in the heat of the moment," he said.

Gajda said there have been no previous problems reported about the system. But Sacks said the system froze when he tried to get a ticket for the University of Georgia game, forcing him to spend $200 to buy a ticket elsewhere.

He formed a Facebook group, "Protest SEC ticket ordering system," that had nearly 90 members by Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. He said he's hoping to get UF to start from scratch in distributing tickets.

"I think the only fair way to do it would be to do it all over again," he said.

But Gajda said doing so would penalize students who were able to get tickets.

Both Ticketmaster and UF Athletics Director Jeremy Foley issued statements apologizing for the problem.

"We are so proud of the incredible support our students provide to this athletic program, and in this instance, we failed you," Foley said. "We take great pride in our customer service and are truly sorry that this happened."

This year also marks the first time that a voucher system will be used for student tickets. Students who obtain tickets must first get the Student Ticket Office to check if they're registered for at least 12 credit hours.

They're then given a voucher that they must present with two forms of identification at the Georgia Dome, the site of the game. Students then get their tickets and must immediately enter the game.

Gajda said the same method was used during the 2006 national championship game and will be used for other big games in the future.

"We're trying to do everything possible to prevent students from getting tickets and dumping them on the open market," he said.