Why Montana Griz Playoff Tickets Disappeared So Quickly

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - It’s the law of supply and demand, and who has the fastest internet connection; that’s the explanation by University of Montana Director of Strategic Communications Dave Kuntz as to why tickets for the FCS semi-final game between Montana and North Dakota State went so quickly.

KGVO News spoke with Kuntz on Wednesday after several calls to the Talk Back show claimed that third-party ticket-selling sites had snatched up the remaining tickets.

UM Spokesman Blames Supply and Demand for Griz Ticket Crunch

“We've seen unprecedented demand for the game on Saturday, and that means a lot for those of us who've been going to Griz games for many years because we've seen that stadium packed many times,” began Kuntz. “How these playoff operations work is a season ticket holders get about a 48-hour window to claim their ticket, and then there's an allotment of 3,000 tickets that are given to the student section. There are also a couple of other pockets that are made available to visiting parents, etc. and then after that, which was Tuesday at five, the remaining tickets are released to the public.”

Kuntz said the demand was so great that thousands of fans simply were not able to get the tickets they wanted.

Kuntz Explained how the Remaining Tickets Went so Quickly

“In this case, there was such a high re-upgrade to those existing ticket sales that only about 2,000 to 3,000 tickets were made available because that's all that was left, as of Tuesday at five o'clock. That’s why they went really, really quickly. We know that people are really frustrated. But what we had here is thousands of Griz fans, all trying to buy those 3,000 tickets at the same time, and so we recognize that folks are frustrated. But this is a result of the unprecedented demand we've seen and not any sort of other issue that folks may have seen online.”

Kuntz said that the third-party ticket sellers only received a small percentage of the remaining playoff tickets.

Kuntz said only about Three Percent of the Tickets went to Third Party Sites

“There are tickets on those third-party sites like StubHub, Seat Geek, etcetera,” he said. “Those are tickets that are either made available through season ticket holders, or the lucky few who did get their hands on tickets on Tuesday at five o'clock and got them up there. But in total, the tickets that are on these third-party sites only make up about 3 percent of the sales capacity, so not even enough tickets to fill up any section of the stadium. So ultimately, we have a big-time semifinal game. The weather's great. It's against a really formidable recognizable opponent, and that's led to this situation where we're seeing unprecedented ticket demand.”

The game will be televised on ESPN 2 with kickoff slated at 2:30 p.m. and on KGVO Radio, NewstalkKGVO.com, and the free KGVO Mobile App with the voice of the Griz Riley Corcoran and color commentator Greg Sundberg.