Did bots buy all the hockey tickets for this weekend? (Sold out in two minutes)
You're meaning to tell me that on 10:30am on a Monday (when tickets were made available for public purchase), and that season ticket holders were not given tickets to BTT (they had to buy them like everyone else, so the number of seats for the game should be higher), that magically, tickets were sold out in 10 minutes?
I have a strong suspicion this is the usual Athletic Department stupidity. There is no way they sold out in less than ten minutes given the criteria above. There are already 30 tickets on Stub Hub for resale. Its bots.
https://twitter.com/umichhockey/status/1632758525309906948
@TheGuyNamedRyan on Twitter commented TWO MINUTES after the UMICH Hockey tweet, referencing they're already sold out.
UMICH Hockey tweeted that tickets were available at 10:02AM, @TheGuyNamedRyan tweeted that they were sold out at 10:04am in his Twitter reply to UMICH Hockey.
Good job AD, way to sell tickets through a site that can be gamed by bots.
*Edit - UMICH Hockey tweeted it out at 10:02am, so tickets were made available a little before 10:30am.
But god damn - it sells that quickly on a Monday while people are at work?
People in another thread referenced they were in a queue from 9am until they were able to buy tickets at 10am.
I wish the AD didn't spam so much other stuff that I'm not interested in so I wouldn't have unsubscribed/would have still been on the e-mail distribution for things I actually care about to buy tickets for.
I clicked the link in my email right at 9AM. I was put into a queue and had to wait until almost 10 after before I was able to view/purchase seats. Everything on the sides were sold out. The seats I picked were snatched up before I clicked Next. I was able to grab 3 in section 24, though.
Every system is perfectly designed to obtain the results that it generates.
Ticket sellers like bots because they profit on the front end as the tickets get sold, then they either profit directly on the back-end as the tickets get dumped on the secondary market because they also facilitate resales and collect more revenue from that (see: Ticketmaster) and/or indirectly as the artificial scarcity drives up ticket prices over time.
tl;dr- it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.
I agree with your analysis, unfortunately.
More evidence that we, as fans, are just droids at the bottom of the turd bucket when it comes to the business of college athletics. Who knows where we’d be if we didn’t have money.
“It’s not personal, Michael, it’s just business”
Bingo.
Ask anyone working in the ticketing department at Michigan or any other large university what their primary objective is. Ask them what they are annually evaluated on to determine the results of their employment review, subsequent merit raises and possible future departmental promotions.
I'll give you a hint.
It's NOT "did you create a hostile environment for opposing teams by making sure that all tickets were sold to Michigan fans and alumni?"
It is "did you sell all the tickets?"
Just another example of the constant fuckery and bureaucracy that complicates everyday life. Makes me wish times were simpler. Although I recall the process to buy concert tickets in the 80's-90's sucked, too. Wait in line physically for hours to buy tickets and they could be sold out by the time you finally got to the front of the line. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There was something strange with the ticket sales. I went on to the mgoblue.com website and clicked on tickets and went to the link for Big Ten Tournament and when I clicked on it on got a "no event" message.
At about 9:05 I went to the e-mail they sent me and clicked on that link which got me to the ticket sales. Most of the sideline seats were sold but there were some end zone which I was able to purchase.
I was in the queue at 9 am and got in less than 5 minutes later and there were almost no pairs tickets left so I just grabbed the 2 best available, which I’m sure aren’t great but thankfully not many bad seats in Yost.
They are already being sold on Stubhub for $90 plus fees.
I’m not a season ticket holder in any UM sport so I don’t have any financial skin in the game, but I think it’s fucked-up bullshit that Michigan season ticket holders aren’t given first priority by our own goddamn athletic department.*
Edit: as several people downthread have made evident, my assertion that UM season ticketholders weren’t given first access to hockey tickets was wrong. It seems that the priority access could have been handled more effectively, perhaps with a longer period of time in which to purchase tickets, but priority access was provided. Apologies, Warde.
preach!
I am a season ticket holder.
On Tuesday, February 28, at 9:00 am EST exactly, the ticket office sent an e-mail to my account address:
As a Michigan Hockey season ticket holder, you have early access to Big Ten Tournament semifinal tickets. If Michigan advances and hosts the game, it will be Saturday, March 11 (time TBA) [...] Place your order by Thursday, March 2 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
So they did give me first priority, and I did place my order and I now have semifinal tickets in my season-ticket seats.
I do agree that they did not need to have a deadline on Thursday when they weren't going to sell the unsold seats until Monday. They easily could have kept Monday for "season ticket holders only" and then put tickets on sale Tuesday for everybody else. That's how they have done it in the past for (for example) softball regionals & super-regionals.
Agreed on both counts. Season ticket holders could pre-purchase their tickets, but the window was also very short. I didn't see the email until the deadline had already passed.
Ditto for me, was able to secure seats last week. Only throwback was that the time, and opponent were unknown at the time of purchase.
They almost certainly do make sure the season ticket holders are given the chance to purchase their regular seats before they go on public sale. My FIL had his regular seats last weekend and again this coming week.
Season ticket holder here. We got the chance to buy early but had to commit before the quarterfinal series IIRC. Essentially everyone did, fully expecting the Wisconsin result.
This is the reason most sideline seats were never available.
I was able to get 4 tickets at 9am without a problem. I am not a season ticket holder.
Username checks out.
Does anyone know how I can buy a ticket bot? Seriously. Me and my 10 person concert crew are all professionals and we see like 50 shows a year. I'm sure if we combined our $ we could put together a pretty good chunk of change.
Tickets were on sale at 9 AM but they didn't tweet until 10.
Argh.
Back in the early 2000's, I was on the season holder wait list. During the summer, I would get a letter from Michigan offering me a package of 3 games I could buy tickets for. Usually, 2 lower desired games and 1 marquee game. In 2003, I took the package that had the 100th game with Ohio State. The other tickets were for a non-conference game and Indiana. Those 2 games the seats were on the 50-yard line, row 26. I sold the non-conference game on eBay and went to the Indiana game. The 100th game with Ohio State was the 40-yard line row 5. My ex-wife and I even made it on Gameday. All these tickets were face value from the athletic department.
I really wish we could go back to getting tickets like this.
Saw a notification at 9:15. Clicked it and logged in and purchased 2 tickets in Sec3. Sale final and tickets sent at 9:18.
Not sure if it might have anything to do with Points. (Humble brag) I am just outside of the top 10% of points. I also did order a pair of tickets for last Friday's game.
This sounds like bitching for the sake of bitching. Tickets went on sale at 9. There was plenty of inventory in the end zones and I had no problem picking up 2 close to the ice. Not a surprise that the tickets sold out in an hour.
Bots loves Michigan Hockey and Taylor Swift I guess
It was very strange. At 9am I was not able to select seats and all the sections were greyed out as if there were not tickets, but when I used the "purchase by price" function, I was able to snag 2 tix by 9:02am. I guess I got lucky.
As a season ticket holder, I wish there was a function in the MGoBlue ticketing system that allows us to simply retain our usual seats and automatically get charged.
It wasn't bots. You were slow. It was advertised via a Sunday email that tickets were on sale at 9am Monday. I was ready at 9am knowing that OSU would be a hot ticket and bought a pair. I thought it was commonsense that it would sell out in a short period of time.
This email only went out to season ticket holders it seems.
Tickets were made available to season ticket holders to pre-order (unlike, as far as I can tell, the first round), so the pre-orders were fulfilled immediately upon it going live, making it look like they were purchased by bots. Source: am season ticket holder who pre-ordered tickets to the semis.