In total, 61,931 season tickets have been sold – the second highest amount of season tickets sold at MSU of all-time, according to associate athletics director John Lewandowski.

Last year, football season tickets sold out close to the beginning of the season in late August – this year, season tickets were gone the second week of August, according to MSU Associate Director for External Operations Paul Schager.

“I couldn’t get tickets because they sold out so fast,” linguistics sophomore Jacob Graham said. “I will definitely try to get [season tickets] earlier next year.”

With the student section maxed out this year, this is the eighth season in a row that more than 13,500 season tickets sold.

Schager believes the team’s success last year plays a main role in ticket sales.

“Students were excited about the season and it is really impacting the sales,” Schager said. “Schedule is a big thing to do with it – this year we have an attractive schedule and it’s coming off of a great season.”

Unlike previous years, the anatomy of the student section is almost evenly split between the classes. According to Assistant Ticket Manager Russell Malburg, the student section is 24 percent freshman, 22 percent sophomores, 22 percent juniors and 26 percent seniors. The remaining six percent of the student section consists of graduate students.

“There tends to be a little spike at the end,” Schager said. “[Seniors] think it’s their last year to take advantage of everything available and want to soak it all in before their college experience [at MSU] is over.”

Similar to seniors, freshmen are more likely to purchase season tickets.

“Coming in there is a lot of interest from the freshmen class,” Schager said. “Typically there’s a lot in the freshman class but the numbers are pretty evenly dispersed this year.”

Although students such as Graham missed their chance of getting season tickets, the athletic department has set up a closed StubHub environment where individual tickets can be purchased from other students or from the department itself.

“We’ve opened up beyond [season tickets] with secondary market tickets where we have provided a mechanism for [students] to sell tickets for the games they can’t attend,” Schager said. “That allows more students to get the experience on a more single game basis.”

Although attendance has slightly increased this year, Schager says ticket sales have been persistent over the past five years.

“We’ve had pretty stable attendance [over the past five years] and pretty strong interest from the student side since Dantonio has been here we’ve been doing well,” Schager said. “[Students] are your core group of sports fans.”

With the added interest, MSU ranks among the NCAA’s top 25 in attendance for the last 58 seasons, Lewandowski said. Spartans also ranked 19th in total attendance — 506,294 people, according to the NCAA.

“I love the atmosphere of the student section,” Graham said. “My favorite part is the sense of camaraderie – being together with all the other Spartans.”