At its meeting in April, the NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Committee reaffirmed its policy to request that host facilities leave a certain number of tickets available to the general public.
The current guidelines for ticket sales state that, when possible, 7% of the total number of seats available in each venue should be held back for public sale. This policy was put in place to ensure tickets don’t sell out from team block sales before the public has a chance to purchase them.
The committee also has encouraged the hosts of the 2023 NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships to follow the policy as well.
The pre-public sellouts have become the norm in recent years, especially at the men’s championship. It almost-certainly would have happened again in 2023 with both meets being at smaller facilities: the women will swim at Tennessee from March 15-18, and the men will be at Minnesota from March 22-25. Tennessee can seat up to 1,800 off-deck, while Minnesota holds only 1,350 off-deck. Both are smaller than the 1,900 seat McAuely Aquatic Center at Georgia Tech that hosted last year’s meet. With concern over the COVID-19 pandemic waning, this year’s men’s meet at Minnesota will almost-certainly be sold out.
If if 7% of the tickets are held for public sale, there will be 126 all-session tickets available to the public in Knoxville. Jean K. Freeman would leave 94 all-session tickets for public sale.
Prior to the opening of tickets to the public, teams are allowed to request tickets, with up to 40 per team treated as priority. Typically, teams sell these tickets to parents of athletes who qualify, but the team tickets can also go to alumni or friends of the program. Requesting or buying tickets early is a gamble, as NCAA invites aren’t finalized until early March, and invites for most athletes are still very much in flux as of January. Since teams are given priority access to tickets, a majority of the “best seats” are purchased by teams before the tickets are available to the general public.
When there are tickets remaining after the conclusion of team blocks, they are usually not along the main competition pool but instead along adjacent warmup pools or diving wells.
If they swim scm or lcm or something there will be more pool to sit besides haha (sincerely a confused Aussie who has no concept of what a yard is)
I think its time they found a permanent venue for the event and set it up properly for about 7-8000 fans and room for the teams. Thinking like how the college world series always does their thing in Omaha
one weekend for women and one for men
When are the general public tickets offered for sale?
Typically end of January.
I hate the idea of even one parent/family member who wants/can attend missing out to ensure the “public” can buy a ticket. I missed my kid swimming NCAAs his freshman year because of COVID. The video was dreadful and commentating abysmal unless you were an Olympian or a child of an Olympian. It would be great if whoever wants to attend can but don’t limit the parents/family/significant others at the expense of making the public happy.
What happens in reality is that the family members get tickets, and then they start giving them to friends of family members, then sometimes teams will pull for other teams if they have good relationships with them, and it spirals.
I’d rather see a system where they just guarantee each qualifier 2 tickets, and then let the rest go up for grabs.
Or just hold it at Indy every year *shrug*.
The sold out meets at ga tech looked barely at half capacity. People who wanted to go watch couldn’t get tickets.
Having been there, I can tell you that there were tons of people up standing around in the back, in the hallways, etc. I think that probably three-quarters of the sold tickets were in the building every evening.
But I also think there’s a lot of “my kid/friend only swam prelims, so I’m not coming to finals” that happens.
Probably not a perfect solution to the problem until the venues get bigger and the family tickets become rounding error. Swimming is always going to have an upwave of “let my friends and family come watch,” even while they scream that nobody besides friends and family come to watch swimming.
I once timed for Nationals in 2018, got to see Joseph Schooling, Caeleb Dressel and other stars up close.
Great way to watch the action up close for free!
Why not have it at a bigger facility? How many does IUPUI fit?
The whole main competition facility seats 4,700, but many times I’ve been there they’ve draped-off the diving facility. I don’t think I’ve been to an NCAAs there so not sure what the setup looks like…
When NCAA’s have been at the Nat they do not curtain off any sections so the full 4,700 seats are available.
Gotcha. I guess that makes sense, since they’re doing diving too.