BOULDER, Colo. — Students wrapped around the University of Colorado Boulder campus to get Rocky Mountain Showdown tickets Wednesday.
One CU student told Denver7 he got in line at 3:30 a.m. to get a seat at Saturday's game against the Colorado State University Rams. The students at the front of the line said they went to the Folsom Field box office around 10 p.m. Tuesday and slept there overnight.
The scene was reminiscent of the lines we've seen recently for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift concerts.
This is in large part due to the excitement over Coach Prime and his record leading the team to 2 wins already this season. The demand for the Rocky Mountain Showdown intensified due to the new way CU is handling tickets this season.
The new system in place for football tickets is a claims process. Owning a Student Sports Pass allows students to get a place in an online queue for a ticket, but does not guarantee them a ticket.
Folsom Field has the capacity for just over 50,000 people in the stands, and 11,000 seats are reserved for the student section. That accounts for about a third of the student body, according to CU.
The university acknowledges it sold 12,000 student sports passes this year, so hundreds of students who paid for a Student Sports Pass can't go to the game.
"We want to maximize student attendance and also minimize no-shows. There's going to be times where on a given weekend, a student or anybody may not be able to use their ticket. And we wanted to make sure that there's a procedure in place where that ticket would be used," Steve Hurlbert, chief spokesperson for CU Boulder, said.
Tickets for the Rocky Mountain Showdown at Folsom Field went on sale at 7 a.m. Wednesday for students. Student tickets cost $35.
🏈 At last check only about 50 tickets remained
— Wanya Reese (@WanyaRDenver7) September 13, 2023
🏈 Student tickets cost $35 dollars
🏈 Student I spoke with got in line at 10 p.m. and spent the night
The cheapest seat is $177 in Section 101 on StubHub, as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Vivid Seats said CU-CSU was the fourth-most expensive college football seat in the nation as of Tuesday, with an average get-in price of $201, according to reporting from our partners at the Denver Post.
Hurlbert said the university is looking into ways to give students more opportunities to buy tickets, maybe even without a sports pass, but nothing is set in stone.
