Horned Frog football tickets cost more this season, but they will be the cheapest tickets available in the Big 12 Conference, said Jeremiah Donati, athletic development officer for Frog Club.

New seating called “scholarship seating” replaced the reserved sections of Amon G. Carter Stadium, and fans can only purchase seats in these areas after donating a specified amount of money, Donati said.

Final prices for all season tickets for football games range from $150 to $500. The $150 tickets are for Frog Zone general admission season tickets. The price range narrows to $225 to $500 for scholarship seats that require a donation. About 65 percent of seats cost $200, but all scholarship seats require a donation anywhere between $25 to $500, depending on the section.

“Those prices are by far the most affordable in the Big 12 Conference,” Donati said.
Some people may not know why the new seating is called “scholarship seating,” but Donati said the name reflected how the money was used. All of the money, including donations from the scholarship seating sections would go toward student athlete scholarships instead of paying off debts or funding buildings.

The introduction of scholarship seating might have been one of the biggest changes for season ticket holders.

Donati said he looked at all of the Big 12 schools and 40 to 50 other schools in order to get a price range on which to base the scholarship seating prices. Other schools were either already in or about to transition into a BCS conference, like Boise State University.. He said most of the schools had some sort of priority seating system similar to TCU’s new scholarship seating.

“Given that we’d only raised our ticket prices $10 for the past six years, we weren’t going to be able to jump right into the big price ranges, but we wanted to value the seats accordingly,” Donati said.

Over nearly two years of preparation, Donati said many people came together to make a final decision on new season ticket prices. Some of the many people involved included the board of trustees, the Athletics Committee, the Frog Club board of directors and some season ticket holders who offered their opinions. The board of trustees and the Athletics Committee made the final decision to approve the new seating program in time for the upcoming 2012 season.

Previous season ticket holders can start selecting their seats in March and will continue based on the Horned Frog Priority Points system.