Feb 11, 2005 2 min read

PITTSBURGH (AP) – University of Pittsburgh basketball and football fans will be paying more for tickets as part of a $45 million campaign to fund more athletic scholarships and build better facilities for some secondary sports. While some ticket prices are going up, fans will have to donate money just to have the right to buy the best season tickets for football and all seats for basketball. Donations are already required for the right to buy some premium seats – but those thresholds have been increased and applied to more seats.

At the Petersen Events Center, for example, fans will have to donate $3,000 to buy a single VIP front-row floor seat for men’s basketball – up from $2,500. At Heinz Field, where the Panthers play football, a season-ticket package for seats between the 40-yard-lines cost $144 last season. It will still cost $144 next season – but the purchaser must now make a $100 donation to buy the tickets.

“It’s not our goal to force the common man out, nor do we believe this new structure does that,” said Pitt athletic director Jeff Long. “By the same token, we feel as though we need to tap into what I believe to be tremendous potential for growth.”

About 25 percent of Heinz Field season tickets will require a donation. At the basketball arena, nearly all the non-student seats will because the school will award the right to buy seats on a points system – with donations being a key way fans can earn those points.

“This is not unique to Pitt,” Long said. “This gets us in the ballgame, up to a moderate level.”

Pitt offers scholarships up to full NCAA limits in just four of 19 sports – football, men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball. Several programs (soccer, track and women’s tennis) don’t even have permanent on-campus facilities.

Pitt also needs to upgrade facilities for swimming, diving, wrestling and baseball.

“It’s not even a good junior high facility,” senior associate athletic director Mike Pratapas said of Pitt’s baseball field.