Bowl Games should Stop Allotting Tickets to Schools
Dec 5, 2015; Charlotte, NC, USA; An overall view of Bank of America Stadium before the ACC football championship game between the Clemson Tigers and the North Carolina Tar Heels at Bank of America Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
With the increased use of secondary ticket venues such as Stubhub and Seat Geek, schools are often unjustly punished for fans not purchasing tickets through the school.
Mississippi State is facing the same predicament a lot of other schools will face that have been selected to play in a bowl game. Will they be able to sell the 8,000 tickets the school has been allotted for their bowl games?
This used to not really be much of an issue. Any team which was selected to go to a bowl would have those tickets gobbled up by their fans. This made everyone happy. The fans got to see their team play in a bowl game, the school sold the tickets they were supposed to sell and wouldn’t be stuck with the bill themselves, and the Bowl had a stadium full of people watching their game. So what changed?
The way people buy tickets isn’t what it used to be. The secondary ticket market has emerged and changed the game. Normally on the secondary ticket market, people mark up the cost of the tickets well over face value. But when it comes to bowl games, it is often easy to find tickets for substantially lower than face value.
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While this is great for fans, it makes life difficult on the schools who have to sell the tickets the bowl has given them. Any unsold tickets by the school, the school has to buy. And to make it even more difficult, the seats given to the schools participating are often not as good as the ones you can buy directly through Ticketmaster.
Because of this, fans often have to make a difficult choice when choosing to attend a bowl game their favorite school is participating in. Do they buy the tickets through the school’s athletic office and pay more for worse seats to take the financial burden off the school, or do they buy the tickets at a cheaper rate through the secondary ticket market but possibly put a financial hardship on the school they love?
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It’s a choice fans shouldn’t have to make. With the increased options to purchase tickets, bowl games should stop allotting tickets to the schools. This won’t happen because each bowl can guarantee a certain number of tickets will be sold at face value by requiring each school sell a certain number of tickets. And because of it, you’re going to have a tough choice to make if you plan to watch the Bulldogs play in Charlotte this season.