KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Every home football game, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has about 11,500 tickets available for active students. Last week, the university sent an email to the campus community warning that they've been made aware of some students trying to resell their tickets and that they have now disabled "ticket transfers."
Students pay $10 for student section tickets and some students who were lucky enough to get one resold them for a profit.
"People have been selling them on their Snapchat stories. A couple of my friends have done it and have bought them. It's been pretty common practice," said Sean Laird, a UT student who has seen students resell tickets.
Big Orange Tix, the organization in charge of student tickets, said it noticed students have been reselling tickets. They sent an email out before last Saturday's game against South Carolina reminding students that reselling tickets was not allowed and that they have now disabled ticket transfers.
Some students said reselling student-section tickets could actually be saving students money if they weren't able to get one. General admission tickets can cost hundreds of dollars through resellers.
"Buying tickets could be more than $200, especially for that South Carolina game. Some were going for, like, $300. Buying a ticket from a student for, like, $60 is a lot better than having to buy a ticket for way more," said Laird.
Big Orange Tix said any student caught selling a ticket will lose their ticket privileges. Some students said that the resell was profitable for them.
"It was a nice little hustle, maybe get some extra money for books or school supplies," said Laird.
WBIR reached out to UT on Wednesday to talk about the end of the ticket transfer. It said the email was sent to students as a reminder that ticket transfers are disabled.
"This is not a new policy. We chose to disable this feature to prevent a secondary market for student tickets," UT said.