"College football isn’t only an obsession, it’s a lifestyle, and now apparently a business."
Michigan v. Utah Football Tickets from $1.
No, you didn’t read wrong- the tickets for the University of Michigan’s first game of the football season retail at these seemingly dirt-cheap prices.
Obviously, they can’t be bought at your on-campus Athletic Ticket Office (if they did, there would be a line comparable to those at an Apple store during Christmas). The above-priced tickets were listed on the genius social networking site that is Facebook, where they can sell anywhere from $1 to the whopping price of $300.
Of course, this usually operates on an auction system where the ticket goes to the highest bidder. Hence, tickets never actually sell for $1. It also depends on who’s playing whom. University of Michigan students are willing to pay up to $300 for the home team versus Michigan State University, their longtime rival. But even for the games that foster less competitive spirit, such as the Michigan versus Toledo game, can sell for $40 online.
And this phenomenon is not restricted to a single college town, but is happening all across the country as football-crazed Americans become more and more desperate to get their hands on a ticket as the game day draws nearer. College football isn’t only an obsession, it’s a lifestyle, and now apparently a business.
Enterprising college students have cottoned on to the fact that buying and selling tickets is a viable business and an easy way to make money on the side while cramming for midterms and balancing a social life without having to actually work for money. I know friends, and friends of friends, who specifically buy the season pass just to sell them for a tidy profit.
I, too, have participated in this black market phenomenon, but I stumbled into this by coincidence. Frantic to watch the first game of the season, Michigan versus Utah, I paid $195 for a season pass, which covers seven home games. After sitting four hours in the sweltering sun and watching the home team lose, I decided that the rest of my tickets couldn’t possibly go to waste and I decided to put them up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. A few days later, a girl contacted me and agreed to buy my ticket for $40. Success!
Don't Like Football?
If you’re only going to watch one game, and still think the season pass is pretty pricey, think about it this way: The cost price for each ticket is $26.50 (at Michigan), and if you catch, say, two games and sell the rest for about $50 each, you’d have made $250 from five games. Which makes your profits total $55. Impressive, no? In addition, it’s practically a guarantee that you’ll sell every ticket, so profit or not, at least you’ll break even.
This buying and selling of tickets has probably been happening for decades, but this process has only recently been accelerated with the rise of the Internet, particularly on networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Students now need not loiter outside the stadium hours before the game begins, trying to rip off other students or alums by selling their tickets at highly inflated prices. They merely sit in the comfort of their homes and rip off students by selling their tickets at highly inflated prices. Websites like www.exchangehut.com and www.ticketliquidator.com are also alternative sources for tickets, and facilitate transactions between students, or the public in general, but judging from word-of-mouth around campus, Facebook seems to be the most popular option.
How about this situation from the buyer’s point of view? Answer: They don’t mind. “For me, football is a whole college experience. It’s all about school spirit… I definitely have to watch at least one, never mind the price,” says Lixian Low, a U-M international student and freshman who is keen to experience American lifestyle. Local students, too, are willing to pay slightly more expensive prices for special games such as homecoming or Maize Out, where students wear all yellow.
While this increasingly profitable trend applies to other kinds of tickets, it is the (black) market for football tickets that is a sure-fire way to make money. So if you have a few tickets you’d like to get rid of, or if the thought of freezing your butt off during the winter games is distinctly unappealing, why not join the legions of students who put tickets up for sale online? I’m sure there are football-crazy students or adults who definitely wouldn’t mind the weather. And if the lack of face-to-face communication that online sites offer bothers you, feel free to hang around the stadium on the day itself. Either way, you’ll definitely make some cash.
