Hoping for a full house

The seats aren’t in the place yet, but you can get an idea of where yours might be starting Tuesday as the University of Oregon hosts the first of three public open house tours this month at the ever-evolving Matthew Knight Arena.

“People want to see what’s going on there,” UO senior associate athletic director Jim Bartko said. And the UO wants to sell you season tickets in the $227 million arena, the most expensive college basketball arena ever built, for the men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball games set to begin there for the 2010-11 seasons.

The last thing the UO wants when the men’s basket­ball team — led by whomever is hired in the very near future to coach it — plays the University of Arizona in the Pac-10 opener on Dec. 30 is to see half the 12,541 seats empty. The new arena will hold about 3,500 more fans than the one it’s replacing, 83-year-old McArthur Court, and no games were sold out there during the 2009-10 season.

The goal is to sell at least 7,000 season tickets in the new arena for men’s basketball, Bartko said, and 1,000 or so single-game tickets every game. With almost 2,000 student seats available, that would put at least 10,000 fans in the seats.

“That will get us darn close to what we need,” Bartko said.

Season tickets to men’s games at Mac Court in recent seasons have averaged about 5,000, according to the UO.

The deadline to make a nonrefundable $100 deposit on season tickets in the new arena is April 30. The deposit will be applied to whatever season-ticket package fans buy.

The deposit guarantees fans a spot in line for personal seat selection meetings to begin in June and continue through the summer. Seat assignments will be based on the amount of money donated to the Duck Athletic Fund, years of consecutive season-ticket purchases and other factors.

About 3,800 deposits have been taken since Jan. 1, Bartko said. That includes fans who have bought Legacy Fund packages, which include courtside seats that cost as much as $1 million for a block of 10, and other prime seats in the arena. There are about 1,100 Legacy Fund seats that begin at donation levels of $25,000, and they are almost sold out, Bartko said.

The UO Athletic Department has been holding weekly open houses at 4 p.m. on Mondays at the Len Casanova Center by Autzen Stadium since November, and those will continue through April 24, Bartko said. But taking fans into the arena obviously has greater power, he said.

“It’s such a big impact just to get in the building and be able to sit down and look up and see how steep it is,” he said of the seating, designed to replicate Mac Court’s on-top-of-the-players ambiance and intimacy.

It’s possible more open house tours will be held at the Matthew Knight Arena in May, Bartko said. Construction at the new arena will halt about 4:30 p.m. during this month’s 5 p.m. open houses on Tuesday, Saturday and April 17, he said.

Some fans have worried that they won’t be able to afford tickets in the arena that will have fancy lounges, cushioned seats, etc. But take away the one-time construction fees that range from $250 to $2,500 per seat for the new arena, and the ticket price and Duck Athletic Fund prices per seat are roughly comparable to existing levels.

The average ticket price for men’s basketball games for all seats in the new arena will be $28, compared with the average of $21.52 for reserved seats in Mac Court this past season. But there will be lots of $15 game tickets available in the new arena’s terrace-level seating. For women’s basketball and volleyball, ticket prices will be $6 to $16 throughout the arena.

The mandatory Duck Athletic Fund contributions for season tickets in the new arena are less than Mac Court for most fans because Athletic Fund contributions for football and men’s basketball will now be separate, whereas previously football donors did not have to pay an additional Athletic Fund donation for men’s basketball season tickets.

Mac Court season-ticket holders for men’s basketball have paid an annual Athletic Fund donation of $200 to $1,750 per seat, in addition to ticket prices. In the new arena, Athletic Fund donations for season-­ticket holders will be $100 to $500 per seat, excluding courtside seats.