The performer for the annual Spring Concert will be revealed at the men’s basketball game against Tennessee-Martin during halftime 7 p.m. Thursday night.

Students will see the unveiling of the artist’s banner while listening to the artist’s music in Lantz Arena.

The University Board is responsible for organizing the Spring Concert and will continue last year’s collaboration with Eastern Athletics to announce the artist.

Titus Young, graduate assistant for student services, said the reveal would be a great way to support athletics and boost school spirit.

“We can sit there and announce it in the Bridge Lounge but that’s not the best space to kind of do something big,” Young said.

Both the Pink Panthers, cheerleaders and UB staff will help distribute 100 free T-shirts to the crowd. The T-shirts will have “Big Reveal” on the front along with the artist’s name.

“We want to build campus-wide excitement for the concert,” Young said.

Students have a chance to guess the artist participating in the Spring Concert Trivia Contest by using the clues found on the University Board’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The students who guess correctly will be placed in a drawing to win the Spring Concert Prize Package of two concert tickets, two backstage passes and two T-shirts, Young said.

The concert committee started collecting data in the fall semester to gauge what type of artist students would be interested in seeing.

The UB’s concert chair, chair-elect and concert committee members analyzed the survey results and used the results to communicate with a middle agent to get in contact with the artist.

“When we put the survey out, we use that raw data to show it to our agent, say ‘this is what the students want,’ and we go from there. What’s the pricing of these artists, what’s their availability, are they going to be close to us?” Young said. “A lot of different variables go into it.”

The two popular genres this year are between pop and hip-hop/ rap, which is different from previous years where country was the top genre.

“Those were the top two, and it was pretty close this year of people saying that’s the genres they listen to the most, so we took that, especially the genre information, into consideration trying to select our artist,” Young said.

Young said because of low enrollment the Family Weekend concert was cut, but this was to ensure that the Spring Concert would have the same quality as previous years.

“Last year, it really helped out because it was doom and gloom on campus with the state not supporting us and a lot of uncertainty with our budget,” Young said. “When we did that concert it showed that EIU still has life in it.”

Students can start purchasing tickets starting Friday at the Ticket Office in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union and online. Community members can purchase tickets starting March 1.

Student tickets are $20 and general body tickets are $25.

The spring concert will take place April 1.

Kalyn Hayslett can be reached at 581-2812 or kehayslett@eiu.edu.