As a "contentious national battle rages on between ticket sellers and resellers over who owns the rights to a ticket, the digital ticket will get its biggest test this week at the Final Four in Atlanta," according to Darren Rovell of ESPN.com. That is because "about 30,000 seats in the Georgia Dome, roughly" 40% of the total inventory, will be digital tickets. Never have "so many seats been digital for a sporting event as large as this." For the past couple of years, the NCAA "used digital tickets only for the 2,800 student tickets it gave out." The students are "once again included in this group, but are now joined by anyone who won the tickets through the NCAA's lottery, as well as college coaches who are allowed to purchase tickets through the allotment given to them by the National Association of Basketball Coaches." NCAA officials, sponsors and PrimeSport, which is "running the organization's hospitality program, have paper tickets." One source said that the NCAA over a three-year period studied "how tickets were distributed and who ultimately received them." Irregularities were "discovered including blocks of tickets that wound up in the hands of brokers" (ESPN.com. 4/3).
