There are tell-tale signs every year: students suddenly cutting morning classes, people planning afterclass campings—in Araneta Coliseum, that is. When July rolls around, the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) takes over Atenean college life and the annual quest for a coveted Ateneo-La Salle basketball game ticket begins.
UAAP games have had a steady following since its founding in 1938. For the Ateneo community, the games get even more intense whenever the Blue Eagles face the La Salle Green Archers.
But these matches are infamous not just for the much-publicized rivalry, but for the difficulty in getting game tickets—for Ateneans and La Sallians alike.
“Getting tickets for a La Salle-Ateneo game…is next to being religious. One has to pray a lot [to] get tickets to these games,” says La Salle alumnus Emmanuel Bocaling.
Every season however, the tickets don’t always seem to be enough.
From the host school to the member schools
“It’s up to the host school to dispense [the] tickets in the best manner that they can,” says La Salle Office of Sports Development director Edwin Reyes. This year, Far Eastern University (FEU) takes over the reins from previous host University of the Philippines for Season 72.
This control involves the kind and quantity of tickets to be allocated to the member schools. FEU Athletics Director Mark Molina says that the division in terms of quantity and kind are equal for all the schools.
Ateneo Athletics Director Richard Palou explains that 20% of the ticket allocations go to Araneta Coliseum for selling through Ticketnet. The remaining 80% go to the UAAP for distribution to member schools.
This year, however, a new system was put into place in response to high ticket demands for Ateneo- La Salle games. In an August 2009 Inquirer article, Molina said that instead of four schools dividing the ticket allocations, Ateneo and La Salle will be getting half of the tickets—that is, dividing 15,000 tickets for the first round encounter on August 9. By making more tickets available to supporters of the two schools, he says that scalping incidents might be decreased, if not eliminated.
Inside Loyola
In Ateneo, tickets are sold in specific areas designated for various members of the community. Certain restrictions are also imposed. For instance, a person may only buy two tickets upon presentation of a valid ID.
“We don’t want outsiders to come in,” Palou says, explaining that this was a measure to prevent scalpers from obtaining tickets to sell in the black market. “We really want our tickets to go to Ateneo [supporters], so that they are the ones who can watch the game.”
Although Ateneo receives all kinds of tickets, only upper box and general admission tickets are sold to the grade school, high school, and Loyola Schools sectors. The premium tickets go to the school administrators, sponsors, and benefactors.
In other schools
Meanwhile, La Salle’s ticket selling process is conducted through the school intranet. Students log on to their accounts to reserve their tickets. Students are allowed to reserve only one ticket. After reserving, the student prints out the confirmation code and proceeds to the accounting office to pay. Faculty and alumni also follow a similar process.
La Salle students get access to only a small portion of Upper A tickets and around a thousand Upper B tickets. The rest of the upper box tickets go to the alumni, faculty, rank and file employees, and the players’ relatives. Varsity team coaches get Upper A tickets.
School administrators, meanwhile, get lower box tickets while the board of trustees get patron seats. “[It’s like the] Coliseum in Roman times,” says Reyes. “The hierarchy is there. The lower you are, the more big time.”
When patron tickets go unclaimed, first priority is given to the school’s sponsors before making them available to students. “You can’t democratize too much the access to that portion,” Reyes says. “You’re asking for millions from these people
