It's about to get a lot more expensive for fans to ensure themselves of keeping premium seats at Penn State home football games.

The university soon will release a new seating plan for Beaver Stadium that will charge many season-ticket holders reportedly $400 to $600 more per seat per year. Fans unwilling to pay the extra amount might be relocated to another part of the stadium.

The upside of the plan is that it will allow fans who have been stuck in poor seats with little option of moving a chance to upgrade.

"There will be many season-ticket holders who aren't impacted at all by this," said Greg Myford, Penn State associate athletic director for business relations and communications.

The plan will not go into effect for the 2010 season, Myford said, making 2011 the earliest possibility.

Myford said fans will receive the new ticket information shortly after the completion of the Nittany Lions' regular season, which wraps up Saturday at Michigan State.

Myford said he "would rather not confirm any of the specifics" of the plan, which were first reported Saturday by the Patriot-News of Harrisburg. That newspaper cited unnamed sources pointing out the following changes:

* Season-ticket holders between the 40-yard lines will be charged $600 per seat, in addition to their required Nittany Lion Club donations (which are a minimum of $100 per seat).

* Fans from the goal lines to the 40-yard lines will be charged an additional $400 per seat.

* Fans around the end zones will be charged an additional $100 per seat.

Any fans who elect not to pay the additional charges might have their seats relocated. The Harrisburg newspaper reported that section ED - at the 30-yard line behind the PSU bench - would no longer be reserved for students and would take the relocated fans.

Some fans choose to donate well more than the minimum $100 per seat for Nittany Lion Club dues, yet are relegated to lesser seats. Some longtime season-ticket holders with premium seats pay only the minimum, yet are ensured of keeping their seats year after year.

The university views the new plan as a chance to reward higher-paying fans with better seats.

"There will certainly be a tendency to concentrate on anyone who's impacted by having to pay more money," Myford said.

"What there will be little focus on is the person who has been basically supporting athletics [with larger donations] for years and years stuck in the seat that they've been in for years and years without an opportunity to move up because we are in the fortunate position of renewal rates year in and year out of season tickets that are 97, 98 percent. There's just no place to go."

The new plan, the Harrisburg newspaper reported, could generate $24 million more annually for the university.

News of the plan did not sit well with some local season-ticket holders.

"It's very disheartening to hear this," Clark Adelman of Altoona said. "I'm pretty disgusted."

Not, however, disgusted enough to stop paying for season tickets.

"Will I be like every other lamb led along and pay? Probably," Adelman said.

Terry Pannebaker of Altoona said the university knows demand for football tickets is so great that it can charge whatever it wants.

"They know they have that fan base that will pay that money," he said.

Tony Labriola of Altoona is hopeful the new plan will weed out the people who aren't diehard football fans but merely attend games because it's a big social gathering. He's also willing to pay whatever the university asks.

"I'm going to be there," Labriola said. "That's it. I made a decision in 1960 the first day I walked in that stadium that I'm going to be there."

Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who didn't return a phone message left by the Mirror Sunday, told the Harrisburg newspaper that the school must find a way to make more money to support its 29 varsity sports programs.

"The bottom line is, right now, everyone around the country is looking at ways to create new revenue sources," Curley told the Patriot-News. "We've tapped out a number of sources so far - adding a 12th game, the Big Ten Network. ... Now's the time we need to do it."

The university is aware this new plan will not go over well with many fans and is prepared for a public backlash.

"We'd be naive to think that any time that something is introduced that addresses money" that fans won't be upset, Myford said.