It could be that I’m a member of the fortunate population who successfully procured season football tickets, but the details regarding the new, online ticket exchange system were revealed on August 4th with little fanfare.

The preliminary rundown of the system is available here, but for those of you who even find FAQ-style bursts of information too lengthy – here are the most important aspects:

All transactions require a credit card. For those of us who rarely leave a paper trail, this could be a major inconvenience. If you’re thinking of buying or selling tickets this season, it might be best to apply for one ahead of time. Or, just borrow your parents’/eccentric rich uncle’s card.

The minimum sale price is $30 per ticket. The maximum is $60. Gone are the days when you could recoup textbook expenses by simply selling your Michigan and Ohio State tickets (let’s pretend that’s what the money was used for). But also gone are the days when you’d have to lose and arm and a leg for a white-out game. On top of this, the purchasing student will be charged a 15% service fee.

You may sell no more than 6 tickets. This is only bad news if you bought the tickets solely to resell them for a profit or if you only bought season tickets so you could see the Akron game.

You cannot sell your ticket to a specific student. You can, however, forward tickets to a specific student. I would guess the only thing keeping under-the-table deals from happening is the inconvenience of meeting the seller in person.

You can still bring guests. But oh, will it cost you. Sneaking family members and friends into the student section is now going to be much harder, if not impossible, so more and more of us will go through the proper channels. In addition to the $30-$60 ticket price and the 15% service fee, an additional $29 validation charge will be levied. The 15% service fee is applied after the validation charge.

There are several important deadlines to be aware of:

– Selling a ticket – 5:00PM Thursday the week of a home game
– Forwarding a ticket – 5:00PM Thursday the week of a home game
– Blocking a group ticket – 12:00 PM Wednesday the week of a home game
– Group Leader picking up blocked group tickets – 12:00 PM until 4:30 PM on Thursday of game week and from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM on Friday of game week.
– Purchase of guest ticket – 4:00 PM Thursday the week of the home game

It’s not terribly confusing, but there are plenty of ways this system can go wrong. Best of luck to those involved in the planning of the Student Ticket Exchange when it launches August 25th.

[Source: Penn State Student Central]