ISU gouging prices for Cy-Hawk women’s game

Anyone else catch the ridiculous ticket prices Iowa State charged for its women’s basketball game against Iowa? Reserved seats sold for $50. General admission (GA) for $40. For all other home games, adult prices are $15 for reserved seating and $10 GA; youth seats are $10 for reserved and $5 GA.

Teams often use dynamic ticket pricing to account for the quality of opponent. Better teams, higher prices. Caitlin Clark fits that bill. Ohio State upped its Big Ten ticket prices from $15 to $19 for Iowa. Maryland and Northwestern both roughly doubled prices for their Iowa games compared to other conference opponents. Wisconsin increased prices from $7 to $20. That’s dynamic ticket pricing.

Increasing youth ticket prices 800% from $5 to $40 like ISU has is not dynamic. It’s absurd.

I’m not asking Iowa State to be a charity. I’m asking Iowa State to not take advantage of fans with the highest game-to-game ticket price increase of any school in the country.

The highest markup in the SEC among schools hosting defending national champion LSU is at Vanderbilt, where prices rose from $10 to only $25. ISU charged double that for a reserved seat against Iowa.

Coppin State (enrollment: 2,101 students) plays LSU this season. A small school (15 times smaller than ISU’s enrollment) surely could benefit financially from hosting the defending national champions. Yet Coppin State increased ticket prices from $15 to $20. Is the Cyclones’ athletic department that much worse off financially than Coppin State’s?

Ben Schuff

Cedar Rapids