Washington State’s season ticket picture is taking shape with a little more than a month left before kickoff, and the numbers are trailing recent years.
As of now, WSU has sold 8,883 season tickets and 264 mini plans, according to Cougfan.com. That total is below where the Cougars stood in each of the last three years: 9,751 in 2025, 10,222 in 2024 and 11,297 in 2023.
The comparison comes with some obvious context. The schedule has changed, and the program is operating in a much different landscape than it was during those Pac-12 years. Even so, sales figures are expected to keep moving upward before the home opener on Sept. 19 against Duquesne.
Athletic director Jon Haarlow said last week that the department has seen steady interest, especially once single-game tickets went on sale.
"We've been fairly consistent from last year to this year," AD Jon Haarlow told CF.C. last week. "Single games on sale, we've seen a spike in that even just in the opening.
So we know there's been a lot of interest in that. The mini plans have gone really well.
Also, I appreciate the creativeness of how the team has been working through that. We know there's some challenges with the schedule this year, and I've been very forthcoming in some of my frustrations in that, certainly.
"But I think with the creativeness of what the team's been able to do with the mini packages, I think we have an extraordinarily quality home schedule with some of the opponents … We opened up the locker room, obviously the public's not in the locker room, but that's an amazing space for these student athletes. Turf is done, video board is getting really close, lights are almost fixed or done. You can have a completely new home environment in front of a team that is absolutely ready to put people on notice."
The home slate does have some unusual wrinkles. Duquesne won’t exactly jump off the page for most fans, and the post-Thanksgiving home game is never an easy sell. But Arizona, Fresno State and Boise State give the schedule more bite, and those matchups may be helping the single-game and mini-plan numbers.
Haarlow also addressed a bigger question that hangs over the future of the Apple Cup. Washington opted not to continue the men’s basketball series, though the women’s teams are set to meet for the first time since the 2023-24 season. That has only sharpened the uncertainty around the football rivalry.
"Certainly there's been thoughts about once we get through the 2028 game of what opportunities could be there," Haarlow said. "And we've had some very initial, preliminary, on the fringe discussions about what that could look like. But the landscape is changing so quickly.
"It might as well be 15 years from now, as far as how quickly everything is changing around us. But we'll continue to have an open dialogue about that, what puts us in the best position from a financial perspective and a competitive perspective as well.
And I know that they'll do the same thing. But we're in conversations about what that could look like ...
I think anytime you enter into a multi-year agreement with another institution about playing a series of events, you've got to rotate who's the host on that. That's my take on that."
That final point could end up mattering most. Washington’s stance in men’s basketball reportedly centered on hosting every game, a setup WSU had no interest in accepting. If that same approach shows up in football, the long-running series could be headed for a very different future.
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