With the start of every school year, comes new changes to the way high school athletics are run. 

This year we saw multiple changes to the way tickets are sold. We saw the first ticket price increase since 2001 as well as a switch to a new digital sales system.

On August 11, 2022, the Loy Norrix Athletics Facebook account announced the price increase of tickets to games at Loy Norrix and other schools in the Southwestern Michigan Athletic Conference. Loy Norrix, as well as all other SMAC schools, are raising general admission from five dollars to seven. However, tickets can still be bought at $5 if a Norrix student can provide ID.

“Since 2001, the price of goods has doubled to tripled, and the revenue from tickets from games go right back into that sport,” said Loy Norrix Athletics Director Andrew Laboe.

Digital tickets can be bought through GO FAN. GO FAN is an online ticketing service partnering with Loy Norrix to sell digital tickets.

Tickets bought through GO FAN come with an additional $1 fee for buying online. This further increases the price of tickets from $7 for general admission to $8, and student tickets go from $5 to $6, only when bought digitally.

“Digital ticketing is the wave of the current and the future,” Laboe said.

Digital tickets prove to be a very effective and efficient system for the school as it reduces the wait time in lines and makes it easier to manage the number of tickets sold.

Digital tickets come with a downside because not all students have a way to pay online through credit or debit cards. This poses the question of how can these students attend matches if they can not buy tickets themselves. 

As of now, Loy Norrix still offers “at the gate tickets” for many events, but they are slowly transitioning to digital only ticketing events. Once events go fully digital, there will be no alternatives.

“I think the students work really good together on going, ‘Here’s 7 dollars. Can you put this on your card later,’” Laboe said. “They take care of each other and work it out.”

There will, however, be ways to work around this if one does not have the means to pay online. One option students have is to get another student to pay online for them and pay them back in cash. Students can also reach out to Laboe to work out an alternative option.

The new wave of digital ticketing is faster, easier and more efficient but comes with the downside of not being available to everyone. Buying tickets online is just the start of a new digital era bringing about change.