One University of Texas men’s basketball season ticketholder has been a fan of the team for decades, but now, he’s unable to hold onto his longtime seats due to rising ticket prices.
Thomas Bailey, an 88-year-old from Clinton, Tennessee, told Knox News that he has been a season ticket holder since 1967 and even donated to the original construction of Thompson-Boling Arena in the ’80s. At the time, former UT athletic director Bob Woodruff said he’s be able to keep his current seats for life.
Now, however, his seats — which sit in the lower section, 18 rows up near midcourt — have increased in price dramatically. Due to the plans for a new arena courtside club impacting seats, UT standardized the cost of Bailely’s two tickets by a whopping 300% from $1,480 to $4,488. He told that the publication “I can’t afford that,” adding that he’s on a fixed income.
While UT offered Bailey tickets at a rate close to what he’s paying, he’d be in the upper deck, and said, “I doubt if I can even climb up there.” Bailey told Knox News that while he loves the team’s current coach Rick Barnes, he’s been a fan of the team through their good times and bad.
“I went through a lot of thick and thin over there,” Bailey said. “I went over there when there wasn’t half a crowd there. Then whenever it gets really good, they decide they’re going to kick one of us old people out that don’t donate a bunch of money every year.”
Bailey wrote a letter about his situation to Knox News and has since garnered attention throughout Vol Nation, as well as across social media.
