Secondary U

A shady ticket scalping scheme at the University of Kansas recently made headlines, but it appears that, for the most part, schools are inking secondary ticketing deals for their sports teams on their own and out in the open.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association may have played at least a partial role in the paradigm shift. The organization signed a deal with Razorgator in 2007, making the online exhange its “official ticket and hospitality provider” for the men’s Final Four basketball championship.

That agreement has expanded since then to cover the other rounds of March Madness basketball championships, the women’s Final Four, the College World Series and the Frozen Four hockey tournament.

NCAA officials have said the partnership has allowed the association to limit fraud and provide fans with a way to purchase tickets and hospitality packages without profits ending up in the hands of secondary ticket sellers.

Schools to hop on the secondary bandwagon with StubHub include Arizona State, Georgetown, Oregon State, Purdue, Stanford and USC, while Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange counts Boston University, Ohio State, Penn State and UCLA among its clients.

A federal jury is still reviewing the University of Kansas case in which five former athletic department employees and a consultant allegedly sold thousands of tickets worth at least $1 million to ticket brokers.

The university has a secondary ticket marketplace of its own that allows anyone to purchase tickets but limits ticket selling exclusively to donors of the school’s Williams Educational Fund.