Florida State University (FSU) Athletics began the 2025 football season on Aug. 30 with its home kickoff game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. Along with the excitement of facing off with the then eighth-ranked team came frustration regarding student football tickets.
Doak S. Campbell Stadium has a seating capacity of 67,277 and approximately 60 sections, excluding club and suite seating. Of those, only nine sections are designated for student lottery football ticket holders. With an undergraduate population of over 42,000 students, this creates an imbalanced supply and demand for student seating.
Given the high demand, FSU athletics makes efforts to create a fair process for obtaining student lottery football tickets, such as applying Spear-It reward points, to allocate students their proper number of lottery entries upon ticket request. Points accumulate through past attendance of FSU sporting events, class standing and student Seminole Boosters’ points.
However, many students still do not receive tickets and resort to having others transfer tickets to them.
Many students are turning to social media platforms like Snapchat to purchase lottery tickets sold by other students. FSU athletics allocated student lottery tickets are free of charge and selling tickets can result in disciplinary consequences. While selling tickets has always been explicitly prohibited by the Student Conduct Code, there has been a crackdown on ticket transfers altogether, even if the tickets are not being sold for profit.
“Student tickets have never been transferable, per the student code of conduct. Student tickets are for the recipient and transferring or selling student tickets is a violation of the student code of conduct,” Assistant Athletics Director for Public Relations Derek Satterfield said in an interview with the FSView.
Starting with the Kent State game on Sept. 20, students are prompted to sign into their accounts on Seminoles.com to obtain their tickets. Tickets can only be downloaded once students sign into their accounts, which prevents them from easily transferring tickets to others and binds the ticket to a person’s Apple ID.
“By logging into their ticketing account and then transferring tickets, that process keeps the original user’s Apple Wallet associated with their account but moves the individual ticket for that game to another account. Once the transfer recipient accepts the ticket, it removes the ticket from the original user’s account,” Satterfield said. “This should make the binding process simpler and prevent issues with forwarding the email.”
This change interrupted the flow of many students’ game day plans during the football game against East Texas A&M University. When attempting to scan their tickets and enter Doak Campbell Stadium, some students who had a ticket transferred to them or who had moved their ticket to someone else for the previous week’s game against Alabama experienced a technological malfunction that prevented their virtual tickets from scanning properly.
As a result, students were redirected to the ticketing office outside the stadium to have their ticket physically printed. A long line spanned across the lawn that separates Doak Campbell and Dick Howser Stadium, with some students waiting in line for the entirety of the first quarter of the game.
Gameday woes turn sentimental
Students have expressed opposition to this update, as it appears to be adding to the growing student frustration with the gameday experience. Sisters Alyssa and Amanda Wiboon want to experience gamedays together as siblings and Seminoles, but the new crackdown makes it difficult.
“I’m personally disappointed that the transferring of student tickets is basically no longer available; I don’t see any harm in that practice,” FSU public health major Alyssa Wiboon said to the FSView. “Also, as a freshman with a sister who is a senior this year, I find it upsetting that it feels like I don’t have a fair chance to experience football games with my sister.”
For many students, gamedays are a pillar of their FSU experience. Amanda Wiboon highlighted that freshmen, like her sister, aren’t making these treasured memories.
“Coming from a senior, I feel sympathy for the freshmen who have not yet been able to successfully secure a lottery ticket for a single home game,” FSU marketing major Amanda Wiboon said. “Attending football games has encompassed some of the core memories I’ve made while in undergrad at FSU and I believe the underclassmen should have the opportunity to experience the traditions as well.”
Making more student seating available is a solution that many students have been advocating for, but FSU must balance between providing seating for students, the broader Tallahassee community and Seminole Boosters.
“Also, I have respect for the Boosters that donate, but I think the students are the spirit of the game,” Amanda Wiboon said. “It’s a place to show pride in our campus culture and I believe there should be more student seating available.”
FSU Athletics has announced plans to allow students to send tickets to each other while still adhering to the student conduct code.
“We are working on some type of solution that will reduce the possible ways to “send” your student ticket to someone else, so hopefully the number of issues will decrease. Do not transfer your student tickets in the future as we will not be unbinding accounts anymore in the near future,” FSU Athletics said to the FSView.
Kayleigh Jones and McKinsey Lamm are Staff Writers for the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com.
This article originally appeared on FSU News: Student frustration grows over changes to lottery football tickets
Reporting by Kayleigh Jones and McKinsey Lamm, Staff Writers / FSU News
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