Web Site Allows Fans to Skip the Box Office, Print Tickets at Home
By John Maher
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, November 12, 2004

University of Texas basketball fans -- as well as patrons for other Erwin Center events -- will be able to print their tickets at home this season, allowing them to avoid lines at the "will call" window or the delay of having tickets delivered.

"You could order them an hour before the game," said DeLoss Dodds, UT's men's athletic director.

The print-at-home option will be available for every event at the Erwin Center from the circus to the Ice Capades, for a $3 service charge per order through texasboxoffice.com. The system eventually will be expanded for ticketing of other UT sporting events, said Doug Messer, senior associate athletic director.

The ticketing system, which the university leases from California-based Paciolan for $300,000 a year, allows the printing of tickets at home on regular paper. A bar code identifies the ticket.

Some of the most modern sports stadiums now have turnstiles with built-in scanners. At the Erwin Center, portable scanners will be used at the 32 entrances. The scanners will allow students to be admitted with a swipe of their students IDs if they've purchased the university's sports pass.

Another Paciolan product allows fans to electronically resell tickets they don't intend to use, but UT isn't going that far yet.

"We're looking at that option. We're not ready to pull the trigger on it," Messer said. "We're going to take a step-by-step approach. But if they're not going to go, they can donate the tickets to the athletic department."

The print-at-home option has been used for more than two years by some professional sports teams, including the Round Rock Express baseball team.

"Once everyone got the hang of it, it went great," said Express spokesman Kirk Dressendorfer. "At first, it was a little scary to a certain amount of the population. There are so many options. . . . Once we educated people, the large majority took advantage of it."

Messer said he expects the new features to be popular. "There's so many people that understand and use computers and high-tech equipment here," Messer said.