The University of Kentucky has announced a price increase for men's basketball tickets.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Citing a need to "offset our escalating costs," the University of Kentucky athletics department proposed and the school's Board of Trustees Athletics Committee approved Tuesday an increase in cost for Wildcats men's basketball tickets for 2012-13.
Annual donation levels for approximately 7,000 lower level seats will be adjusted.
Per game ticket prices will increase by $5 per game.
Lower level season tickets will now be priced at $45 per game and upper level tickets at $40 per game.
Single-game ticket prices will increase to $50 in the lower level and $42 in the upper level.
In a vote to pass a $91.9 million athletics budget for the next academic year - up from $87.9 million in 2011-12 - the committee also approved increases in K Fund donation requirements for season tickets and in the actual per-ticket prices.
In addition, 6,689 of the 7,081 seats requiring a K Fund donation for season tickets will now require an even greater donation.
Those who had to give $5,000 per seat last season are the only ones unaffected - because their required donation spiked from $1,350 per seat a year ago.
But those who previously had to donate $1,500 per seat (1,332 seats) now must give $1,900.
Those giving $1,000 per seat (845 seats) now must give $1,250.
Those giving $700 per seat (3,784) now must give $850.
And those giving $400 per seat (728 seats) now must give $450.
Adding in ticket-price increases - from $800 to $855 in the lower level and from $700 to $760 in the upper level - the overall hike for K Fund donors ranges from 6.88 percent to 19.78 percent.
The increases will provide an estimated $3.5 million in new revenue, which athletics director Mitch Barnhart said was necessary to cover raises for coaches, rapidly rising travel expenses and increased tuition costs for scholarship athletes.
Barnhart said the basketball increase is not related to UK football's declining season ticket sales, although he acknowledged "we're down" for a second straight summer and could see a further drop from last year.
The ticket-price news came on the same day the athletics department announced it was increasing its giving to the university for academic scholarships from $1.7 million to $3 million.
