Basketball tickets to be sold on StubHub

This season, UNC basketball fans will have a new way to buy and sell tickets.

StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, announced its partnership with UNC on Monday.

Basketball fans interested in buying and selling tickets can access UNC’s ticket office’s website, which will connect them to StubHub.

Although basketball ticket sales on the website begin this season, football ticket sales will not be introduced to the site until next season.

The agreement was facilitated by StubHub’s integration partnership with Paciolan, the athletic department’s multimedia manager, in August.

Clint Gwaltney, director of ticket operations, said the partnership will provide a better personal service to fans who want to buy or sell tickets.

“This is not about money,” he said. “This is more or less about customer service. If there’s someone who wants to buy tickets to a sold-out game, then our website would direct them to StubHub to do so.”

Gwaltney said the StubHub partnership will provide a slight financial benefit through the minimal transaction fees charges for ticket transactions for home games. He declined to provide the exact charge for those transactions.

Glenn Lehrman, a StubHub spokesman, said the company receives 10 percent commission from the buyer and 15 percent commission from the seller.

The buyer avoids shipping and handling fees because the purchaser receives the ticket online.

Lehrman said the company eases the process of buying and selling tickets. Ticket holders have the option of selling individual or season tickets.

After the tickets are bought, the original barcodes are canceled, and new tickets with different barcodes are sent to the purchaser within five minutes of the order, Lehrman said.

“The buyer doesn’t have to wait for FedEx,” Lehrman said. “You can print it out and go.”

Brandon Finch, president of the Carolina Athletic Association, said the partnership will not affect students or the new student ticket policy.

But he said the StubHub partnership might increase public turnout. He likened the partnership to the student “Turn ‘Em Back to Turn it Blue program,” which tries to minimize ticket waste by advocating for students to return tickets if they can not attend games.

“As far as the general population, this will allow them to turn their tickets in and give them to someone else to increase the population at the games,” he said.

Gwaltney said he was unsure if the StubHub partnership would increase turnout for games.

“It does provide people a much easier avenue to get tickets into the hands of people when they might not have done so in the past, but I can’t predict whether people will use those tickets,” he said.

UNC is among the first athletic departments in the ACC to partner with StubHub, along with Florida State University. Lehrman said the company is proud of its increasing partnership with ACC teams.

“We consider the ACC the creme de la creme of college basketball, and we want to make sure that we are a part of that,” he said. “We consider UNC one of the premier basketball teams in the country and for us it was a great place to start.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.