When Gainesville residents jot down items to buy at Walmart, they can now include Gators basketball tickets on their shopping lists.
As of last week, tickets to all of the Gators men’s basketball home games became available in-store. Customers can print out the tickets at a Ticketmaster kiosk in the electronics department and pay for them at the register.
The Walmart-Ticketmaster partnership has been offering discounts on tickets to events such as concerts since last year, said Walmart corporate spokeswoman Veronica Marshall.
Marshall said the men’s basketball tickets purchased through Walmart are in a reserved block in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center. Customers can buy individual tickets to any of the home games. For the Jan. 30 and Mar. 6 games, customers can purchase a bundle of four for $36.
Because UF students have free access to games with a Gator 1 Card, Dean Maassen, a 22-year-old biochemistry and botany freshman, said the Walmart ticket option is of no consequence to students.
Shamica Douglas, a 27-year-old lab analysis tech at Shands at UF, said the Walmart option caters to the group of people who would actually benefit from the kiosk — families who are already in the store buying everyday necessities.
“It’s a family package — very convenient,” she said.
Mark Gajda, the assistant athletics director for the University Athletic Association at UF, said the Walmart-Ticketmaster partnership isn’t hurting business for UF.
In fact, he said, it is working with the ticket office to bring in a broader audience.
“We are trying to bring new fans who may be living in outlying areas into the O’Dome to watch a basketball game,” said Gajda.
