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Fenway Sports Group will begin general ticket sales on Friday for the 135th Yale-Harvard game after the completion of a presale to Harvard football season ticket holders and alumni of both universities.
While student tickets will not go on sale until the fall, Yale Senior Associate Athletic Director Jeremy Makins said on Wednesday that 2,500 tickets have been allocated to the Yale student section and will be priced at $25 each.
“We’ve had closer to 3,000 tickets assigned to the Yale student section in the past and that number gave us the ability to sell a couple hundred ‘guest’ tickets,” Makins said. “This year, we will not sell guest tickets to ensure that all tickets are going to Yale students. We’re still working on the distribution plan.”
The Yale student section at The Game will be near the field and extend from home plate to third base. When the field is configured for football, these seats will be directly behind the end zone and close to the Bulldog bench. While these field-end seats are quoted at $50, Yale students will be able to purchase them at the discounted price of $25.
The $25 price is consistent with student tickets prices for past iterations of The Game, and the same amount that Harvard students paid to get a ticket to The Game in 2017 at the Yale Bowl. The rest of the Yale fan section surrounds the student space from down the foul line in left field to about halfway from home plate to first base.
Interest in tickets is high ahead of Friday’s general sale. On the online vendor Vivid Seats, presale tickets are being resold for up to nine times their quoted price as fans flock to secure a seat at the next chapter of the storied Yale-Harvard rivalry.
However, other elements of game day logistics remain foggy. While the Harvard ticketing website indicates that there may be a fanzone open to the public near Fenway, Harvard’s Associate Director of Athletics Tim Williamson did not provide any additional details about the space’s intended use on game day and did not respond to questions about the status of a transportation plan for getting students from Harvard to Fenway.
Fenway Sports Group also did not respond to requests for comment about game day logistics.
“I think [having The Game at Fenway] is really exciting because it will be a great venue,” said Nellie Conover-Crockett, a high schooler admitted to Yale this year. “There will be a lot of current students and alumni, and I believe it will be an exciting way to end the first part of my first semester at Yale.”
Yale football captain Kyle Mullen ’19, Brian Dowling ’69 — who served as team captain when Yale tied Harvard in the 1968 game — and Director of Athletics Tom Beckett will attend Yale-Harvard Media Day at Fenway Park on May 1.
The Bulldogs won the 134th iteration of The Game 24–7 at the Yale Bowl to secure the Ivy League title outright.
Caleb Rhodes | caleb.rhodes@yale.edu