North Texas launches ticket assurance program

UNT will allow fans to ask for a refund, use the funds from unused tickets to pay for future tickets or convert payments to donations to the Mean Green Scholarship Fund. The fund covers the cost of scholarships for UNT’s athletes.

The policy also establishes a pecking order to distribute football tickets if social distancing practices force the school to reduce the capacity of Apogee Stadium. The plan prioritizes students and those who purchase season tickets.

UNT has already extended the deadline for renewing season tickets to June 30.

The school issued its new ticketing policy at a time when it is working through a host of issues.

UNT hopes to have its plan for returning athletes to campus finalized this week, a source with knowledge of the situation said.

The Mean Green are set to open the season with a home game against Houston Baptist on Sept. 5.

UNT athletic director Wren Baker expressed confidence earlier this spring that there will be a college football season sometime this year.

“I believe we will have a football season,” Baker said. “We will take until the end of June to figure out if we can start on time. I lean toward we will play a full season that will be delayed.”

Confidence in the state of the season has grown since that time.

Schools and conferences across the country have announced time frames for athletes returning to campus and resuming workouts.

UNT shut down its athletic facilities, including the Mean Green Athletic Center, on March 17. The school suspended all team activities at the same time.

The Pacific-12 Conference announced Tuesday that it will allow voluntary in-person workouts to begin on June 15. Clemson University will begin voluntary workouts on June 8, while the University of Oklahoma is waiting until July 1. UNT will soon follow with its own announcement.

UNT officials recently took another step to prepare for the upcoming season by sending out a survey to members of the Mean Green Scholarship Fund.

UNT asked fans if they would come back to Apogee Stadium for football games and if they would be willing to wear a mask at games, said Allen Powell, a UNT graduate and booster who filled out the survey.

One of the questions several programs are dealing with in advance of the season is how to maintain social distancing in stadiums. UNT has established how it would handle that issue in its ticketing policy that prioritized season ticket holders and students.

Apogee Stadium’s capacity is 30,850. The school has never sold out the venue and averaged 21,358 fans per game last season.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said last week that the school has looked at scenarios using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on social distancing to examine how many fans could attend home games in the fall.

Smith said those guidelines would allow about 20,000-22,000 fans in Ohio Stadium, a venue that seats nearly 105,000. He said that if those guidelines are relaxed, the venue could fit as many as 50,000.

Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard announced Tuesday that the school would have to limit the capacity of Jack Trice Stadium to 50% under current guidelines.

UNT has not yet addressed how many fans would fit in Apogee if social distancing is in place. Apogee Stadium was more than half full for each of the Mean Green’s home games last season.

The school fell just short of a sellout when a season-high crowd of 30,123 showed up for a loss to Houston. The Mean Green still drew 16,094 fans for a win over Middle Tennessee — the lowest turnout of any UNT home game at Apogee last season.

UNT could face a seating shortage for the first time since Apogee opened in 2011, depending on the social-distancing policies in place in just a few months.

The school laid out guidelines to handle that potential problem this week as it prepared to unveil its plan for returning athletes to campus.