HELLE

February 7th, 2012 at 6:36 PM ^

Would have been to limited ticket sales and to not sell our allotment. Selling out looks great for the University. The market will now set the price. My guess is that the price will creep back to face value a couple weeks before the game.

Mr. Rager

February 7th, 2012 at 9:12 PM ^

If I remember correctly you could get UTL tickets for about $50 cheaper (per ticket) the week before the game than any time before.

However, I think that was in direct correlation to them losing to USF in week 1.  

I don't see the Bama tickets reducing in price much.  People will continue to book flights / commit to going to see this game, thus I feel the demand should increase.

HELLE

February 7th, 2012 at 10:58 PM ^

per Stubhub:
"Price competitively from the start. In most cases, ticket prices drop as the event approaches. So pricing too high with a ' wait and see' approach could mean you'll get less for your tickets in the end – or not sell them at all."
 
I see this everytime I have used Stubhub. People want to get rid of their tickets at a profit so they price it the lowest. Then more people start doing this when they start to realize "man, I got to get rid of these tickets". As the event gets closer, mass panic takes over and that's how you end up with $6 Big Ten Championship tickets and $30 Sugar Bowl tickets. Heck, even the National Championship Game dropped from $1400 to $900 a week before the game. These are two top ten teams playing at a nuetral site, that is nowhere near them. I don't see how the hype will get any greater than we already anticipate it to be at.

rcm

February 8th, 2012 at 8:40 AM ^

Though every once in a while, the market will see an increase, and you'll get those people that see a spike when their tickets sell and then they renege on their sale. Happened to me with 2010 season tickets: I bought 2nd row student section seats for $750, seller told me he 'couldn't find them', then saw him re-list for $1000 or so. 

93Grad

February 7th, 2012 at 6:40 PM ^

these tickets have sold far better and for more money than the Sugar Bowl.  Obviously Bama is a much better opponent, but the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans is no slouch. 

tbeindit

February 7th, 2012 at 6:43 PM ^

StubHub is a horrible organization.  It just legalizes scalpors.  Seriously, I just see event after event's attendance get ruined by StubHub.  Will this game be full?  Should be, but it makes no sense for universities to even sell tickets anymore when another group will just sell half of them at enormously cheap or expensive rates.  

Does the concept sound bad?  Not really, but the effective certainly seems to be.  Sugar Bowl tickets were all over StubHub thanks to the great partnership, but nobody seemed to buy them up.  I just don't think the site does what it needs to do.

snarling wolverine

February 7th, 2012 at 8:00 PM ^

No - that doesn't bother me.  People can buy tickets for any reason they want.  They don't have to go to the game if they don't want to.  If a guy can make a living by reselling tickets, hey, more power to him.

Anyway, what scalpers really do is increase the supply on the market.  Whether the price rises or falls thereafter depends on the demand of the event.  If it's not a sellout, the price will drop below face value.  If it is, the price will rise above face value - but if it weren't for the scalpers, the ticket wouldn't be available in the first place.

In the case of the Sugar Bowl, scalpers were the only way to get a cheap ticket.  If you bought it through U-M or VT, you had to pay through the nose.  

MGoSoftball

February 7th, 2012 at 9:06 PM ^

well stated.  It looks like you stayed awake in class.  +1 to you good sir.

StubHub is the great equilizer.  For example, a random Detroit Tigers game on a Wednesday in July is well below market value.  So it gives a family of 4 an opportunity to get lower box seats and a meal for under $100.

These seats are cheaper because every season ticket holders cannot possibly go to all games.  Thus they have to unload them cheaper than the box office.

jmblue

February 7th, 2012 at 8:10 PM ^

they hurt the people trying to buy the tickets by depriving them of a fair and reasonable price.

But what is "fair and reasonable"? It often goes the other way. For games against teams like EMU, U-M often has a few thousand extra $70 tickets for sale that are hard to move. They're hard to sell because you can easily obtain a ticket for below face-value (sometimes far below it) from a scalper. Without the scalper you'd be forced to pay the $70.

justingoblue

February 7th, 2012 at 8:17 PM ^

On the flip-side, the AD isn't getting a "fair and reasonable" price for, say, the ND UTL game. Brandon said he thought he could sell 200,000 tickets, yet the price point on those tickets didn't change (obviously there are some good reasons for this, such as offsetting the EMU price, or not pissing off season ticket holders).

If every game was done by "fair and reasonable", I'm betting the AD would have sold out the UTL game at two or three times what people paid for tickets from the University.

IMO, nothing can be more fair than supply meeting demand, which is how scalper prices are set.

03 Blue 07

February 7th, 2012 at 9:45 PM ^

An alternative approach: To combat this issue you raise that the school isn't getting any benefit, I thought the Chicago Cubs had deals with brokers where they have to buy certain tickets/amounts/packages. It mitigates the risk of a sudden drop in demand. If U of M had a deal with StubHub like that, that would obviously be good for U of M. The thing is, though, the AD made this decision- to allow certain people to buy unlimited amounts-- knowing what would happen, I would have to assume. Hell, maybe it's like a kickback to the people who give the most money. Which I'm not totally opposed to (I'm not one of those people getting the kickback, nor will I be any time soon).

justingoblue

February 7th, 2012 at 9:52 PM ^

Well, I wasn't exactly saying that the AD didn't get any benefit, just expanding on jmblue's argument that scalpers can help bring prices down with the counter that the University's ticket prices don't accurately reflect demand on the other side with high-end games. Obviously, they feel their strategy is beneficial, or they wouldn't have it.

I agree with you that there are benefits to a) keeping prices set for the reasons I listed in my first post and b) what you said about hedging bets by selling off blocks of tickets (and you won't get StubHub to agree to buy five thousand EMU tickets without offering OSU tickets as well).

Tacopants

February 7th, 2012 at 8:16 PM ^

Not that I support it, but it will happen.

Anyways, I'm not sure those listings are even from the AD alotment.  You generally need to have the tickets on hand in order to list IIRC, and nobody's getting their tickets until mid July from the ticket office.  Those tickets might actually be sponsor's tickets or something.

Drbogue

February 8th, 2012 at 10:10 AM ^

StubHub allowed me to score 2 tickets, Section 1, row 40 for the Ohio game from down here in Florida last season for < $300/ticket. No way I was going to get tickets to that game, on the 50, without a lot of hassle. Paid, printed tickets, moved on. And they are officially associated with the UofM ticket office so fraud is very unlikely. Scalpers will exist whenever you have a big time event, but my tickets were from season ticket holders and StubHub was an easy mediator for the transaction.

Tater

February 7th, 2012 at 7:49 PM ^

Stubhub is neutral.  It's the assholes who have enough money to have amassed "points" who are buying tickets and putting them on stubhub instead of giving Michigan fans the opportunity to buy them who really suck.

The office should get the ticket numbers and take all "priority points" away from anyone who put their tickets up on StubHub.  If they did it the week before the game, at least there would be the excuse that "something came up and I can't go."  

This is just a money grab, and the people doing it should be punished for gaming a system that is supposed to ensure that bona fide Michigan fans get tickets in the Michigan section.  I say take away their season tickets and tell them they can start out at the bottom of the list.

bigmc6000

February 8th, 2012 at 9:34 AM ^

as much as it is "does."  If a perfect world, sure, they would punish those people but we live in a world where the only thing that makes the AD exist is the tons of cash they get from those people and as long as they are the hand that feeds the AD isn't going to bite them.  Wrong or not that's just how it works *shrug*

Bando Calrissian

February 7th, 2012 at 8:20 PM ^

Well, this can't really be a surprise, though, can it?  Heck, season ticket holders got emails from Athletics encouraging them to use StubHub to sell off extra seats for Michigan football, basketball, and hockey.  It's a bonafide part of Athletic Department marketing, and an easy payday so they get a cut of the secondary market.

They have a point in tracking these people down, but at the same time, they plastered the entire stadium concourse with StubHub ads and run StubHub promotions at other sporting events.  So either StubHub is OK, or it isn't.  What's it going to be?

Bando Calrissian

February 7th, 2012 at 7:56 PM ^

Doesn't the Athletic Department's sponsorship/relationship with StubHub give them a cut on these sales?  Or is that only for season tickets entered into StubHub through the University system?

Bosch

February 7th, 2012 at 8:07 PM ^

office today to confirm that my ticket order yesterday was going to remain valid as I was slightly concerned that they oversold.  I was reassured that, since I only puchased 4, I was certain to get tickets.  However, some of those assholes who bought extra tickets to flip in order to try to make a buck are going to be in for a surprise when they don't actually get their complete order filled.

Since I'm on that subject, I don't understand how someone who claims to be a Michigan fan, one with a decent amount of priority points mind you, can rationalize screwing fellow Michigan fans out of the opportunity for tickets by buying up the allotment and reselling them to potentially non Michigan fans.  If I'm sitting next to some obnoxious Bama fans, I'm going to be less than pleased.

Edit:  Just read Taters comment..... kind of takes dulls the impact of my second paragraph.

jmblue

February 7th, 2012 at 10:38 PM ^

While I don't understand the mentality of these sellers either, what they're doing isn't necessarily all bad for the fanbase as a whole.  

There are probably a lot of diehard Michigan fans who had no idea that the tickets were on sale this week.  There may be many other fans who want to go but didn't have the opportunity to buy tickets from the school because they didn't have the necessary points.   If no one had put tickets on Stubhub, both of those groups of fans would be frozen out.  What the secondary market ends up doing is giving fans more total opportunities to buy tickets, albeit sometimes at inflated prices.   

 

cozy200

February 7th, 2012 at 9:04 PM ^

Couldnt agree more. Said this on the other post as well. Had a friend buy 10 to sell so he could go to the game for free. Not hating on that so much as his claim to be a huge fan but couldnt name a player from the 97 squad. Same kinda dude who sells his utl tix for the cash and doesnt even watch the game at home. I guess it means more to me then just money. It stands for something. Just not what i like to see happen. Cheapens the game to me and is very frustrating.