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2025 Ticketing Star Awards: Kari Nelson

Kari Nelson Headshot

Kari Nelson
Director of Ticketing | University of Montana, Missoula

It would be a daunting task for any stadium anywhere to put on three concerts by three artists in a single week.

Even the world’s most well-known and glittering super-venues rarely pull it off. The logistics of any stadium concert — load-in and load-out, parking, staffing, concessions, security — requires levels of interlocking expertise that can be overwhelming.

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And then there’s ticketing, perhaps the live-events industry’s greatest challenge. Every show has different pricing requirements, different set-up, different on-sale patterns, different everything. And to do it all three times in seven days? It’s enough to make grizzled veterans reach for the Excedrin, even if they run ticketing at busy buildings.

In one week in August 2024, Washington-Grizzly Stadium on the campus of the University of Montana in Missoula pulled off the triple: Pearl Jam on Aug. 22, Tyler Childers two days later and P!NK on Aug. 28, combining for a gross of more than $13 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports.

And the grizzled vet who ran the ticketing operation — Kari Nelson, the director of ticketing for the university? She’d been on the job for less than a year.

Nelson, a native Montanan, began her ticketing career as a part-time seller for the college while still an undergrad in 2021. She worked her way up, eventually taking a full-time role as program coordinator and assistant ticket office manager. In December 2023, she was named to her current position.

In her first month on the job, she put on sale three NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) playoff games, plus the championship game and those three aforementioned stadium shows.

In the first year of her tenure, the ticket office sold 495,588 tickets with more than $29 million in sales — an annual increase of more than 200,000 tickets and $10 million in sales — with football season ticket sales setting a new program record, no small feat given that the Grizzlies have long been one of the FCS’s biggest draws.

“Kari’s ability to find innovative solutions and make critical decisions belie her relatively short tenure in the ticketing world,” Sheryl Brown, general manager of campus entertainment, tells Pollstar. “Kari has an unwavering positive attitude in the face of daily challenges. She has a unique ability to relate to everyone on her team because she has literally been in their position! Her real strength is that she works hard to foster a supportive, inclusive, and productive environment for everyone on her team.”

Nelson herself gives credit to the “unwavering dedication” of her ticket office team and “the incredible environment that has been cultivated.”

In addition to stadium ticketing, Nelson also heads ticketing operations for the university’s 7,500-capacity Adams Center, 1,100-cap Dennison Theatre, the U of M planetarium, all intercollegiate athletic events, College of Arts & Media performances and numerous other on-campus events.

“Kari’s outreach to the broader university community has led to an increase in the number of events ticketed by Griz Tix, thus increasing her department’s revenues,” Brown says.

The success of her first year sets a high bar, but if past performance is indicative of future results, the (big) sky is the limit for Kari Nelson.

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