Ticket prices will be going up at new Villanova Pavilion

If your basketball team won the 2016 national championship, has dominated its league and its city over four straight seasons, regularly sells out a professional arena and your 30-year-old on-campus building is undergoing a major renovation in anticipation of an opening for the 2018-19 season, demand for tickets is going to skyrocket. And so are the prices.

Just paying for the privilege of getting to buy tickets has been a way of life in big-time college athletics for decades. In September, longtime Villanova season-ticket holders are going to find out what the new price points are going to be for the Finneran Pavilion.

"The only folks we've talked to about seats in the new pavilion have been those 20 to 25 folks that have given seven figures-plus to the project," Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson said. "All we've talked to them about are the highest end inventory that we have, which are courtside seats."

Jackson explained that courtside seats will require a "one-and-done capital gift." But those prices haven't been locked in. We haven't contracted that. No contract has been approved."

When Jackson was told there has been talk of that gift being around $50,000, he said that could be the range. But it certainly won't be anything close to that number for the vast majority.

"For all of the lower bowl and upper bowl seating at the Pavilion, it's yet to be determined," Jackson said. "It's going to be a very transparent priority point system that we've never had before that will recognize how long you've been a season-ticket holder, how much you've given to the university, whether you're an alum. There's all kinds of different qualifications for that. That's what's going to be rolled out over the next couple of months, but to say that we're strong-arming people into that [$50,000] price point range in order to secure seats, that's not accurate."

There will be "some higher priced inventory that's never been there before," Jackson said, "but again we'll follow a system that will be transparent."

Jackson also said that  "anybody who wants to contact us directly to see exactly where we're at in the process should contact us. … We're ready to take any and all phone calls at this point just so we're communicating the right way."

The renovated building will have still have around 6,500 seats, but the look and feel of the place will be undergoing a dramatic upgrade. College sports at the top levels have been a big business for quite some time. Villanova basketball is as hot as it has ever been, making this a rather uncomplicated case of supply and demand.

So the prices for Villanova games are going up and locations may change, depending on the factors Jackson cited. Some variation of that theme in major college football and basketball is the norm these days. It's not going to be pleasant for everybody, but it's also the new reality.