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Mark McNeil needed tickets for Thursday night's BCS national title game: 31 seats at the Rose Bowl, to be exact.
In the old days - as recently as a few years ago - he would have had to call brokers and take a chance that the tickets were not worthless scraps of paper. Now, he just ordered through RazorGator.com to get the inventory he needed for resales through his company, Pennsylvania-based Premier Luxury Rentals.
``You can do a higher volume because you really get an opportunity to see what's really out there in real time, and it reduces the possibilities of fraud,'' McNeil said. ``Before, when you deal with a ticket broker, you really didn't know who his contact was and you really had to rely on his word.''
Technology has indeed changed the world of tickets, from high rollers such as the clients of McNeil's company - which arranges getaways, private jets and chartered yachts - to a family just looking for a trip to a big game. Tickets can be purchased as gametime approaches with the convenience of a mouse click.
Patrick Debusk, a 44-year-old oil refinery contractor from Houston, is one fan who used StubHub.com to buy a pair of tickets for the BCS championship between top-ranked Alabama and No. 2 Texas. He'll be traveling to Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday with his wife Marty, a 1993 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, and sitting about nine rows up along the 40-yard line.
Debusk paid way over the $275 list price for his two seats. He also used StubHub to purchase tickets for the 2005 World Series between the Houston Astros and Chicago White Sox and the 2004 Super Bowl between New England and Carolina at Houston's Reliant Stadium.
Quite different from an experience at Boston's Fenway Park about seven years ago, when he thought he was getting good seats through a reliable broker and wound up sitting behind the Pesky Pole in right field. Now he knows the exact location and receives his tickets by e-mail or Federal Express - unless he prefers that they be left for him at the stadium.
``If you want to go to the game and you're willing to pay, they're going to come through with a good seat, and the tickets will be easy to get,'' he said.
FanSnap.com, a search engine that pulls together information from dozens of online ticket sellers, said there were 3,000 BCS tickets available at the start of the week, with prices starting at about $600, the average at $1,000 and some seats going for $2,200, spokesman Christian Anderson said.
StubHub's average sale price for the game has been $943, up from $684 for last year's game between Florida and Oklahoma in Miami, according to spokeswoman Joellen Ferrer said. By Tuesday it was the company's fifth-highest-grossing event behind World Series Games 6 and 2 last year, last year's Super Bowl and the 2009 World Series opener.
But in a recessionary time, there's a limit to what fans will pay. Just ask the Yankees and Mets fans who couldn't resell their seats for close to list at New York's pricey new ballparks last year. The infamous Legends seats, sold by the Yankees to season ticket holders at $500 to $2,500 per game, often could be had on the days of games at 50 percent discounts or higher. Many of the seats near the field sat empty - or were given away by the Yankees - while the upper deck was packed every night.
Jason Berger, chief executive officer of AllShows.com and a past president of the National Association Of Ticket Brokers, said his company had sold more New York baseball tickets in 2009 than the previous year but that the dollar volume was down.
``There was just such an oversaturation of product on the market. There was just so much competition,'' he said. ``Since they increased the price of tickets almost 200 percent on some of the locations, there was no ability for people to resell their tickets.''
Team executives have been nervously watching the rate of season ticket renewals. The Mets, coming off a terrible first season at Citi Field, extended their deadline for decisions. For many teams, buyers of season plans no longer can be assured of selling excess seats at a profit.
``In the ticket market, like any other, the market prices are the function of the balance of buyers and sellers, and we're at historic levels of sellers,'' said Michael Janes, the chief executive officer of FanSnap and formerly chief marketing officer of StubHub.
Still, there don't seem to be any brakes for big events. StubHub's average sale price for the Rose Bowl between Oregon and Ohio State was $374, followed by the Orange Bowl at $176, Fiesta Bowl at $163, and Sugar Bowl at $156.
RazorGator, the BCS's official resale company, has sold at least 78 percent more tickets for this year's game than last year's championship.
``The BCS ticket prices went way up when the teams were announced,'' RazorGator CEO Brendan Ross said, who believes fans' confidence in the resale system has made the market much stronger.
For the Super Bowl in Miami on Feb. 7, resale tickets start with an $1,100 asking price and currently average $3,000, Anderson said. StubHub's average sale price for last year's Super Bowl between Arizona and Pittsburgh in Tampa, Fla., was $2,403.
McNeil is looking to purchase 100 Super Bowl tickets. He will package them with three nights hotel, air transportation and ground transportation, pricing the ducats at $4,000 per seat.
``Last year, we saw a decline in prices for both the NFL playoffs and college bowl games, due largely to consumer price sensitivity with the recession. This year, we are seeing increased demand across the board,'' StubHub's Ferrer said. ``A year ago, many fans attending events skewed toward the lower price points; this time around, we are seeing the full spectrum of tickets being purchased.''
And the business figures to grow.
Forrester, a research firm that following the ticket industry, forecasts the U.S. secondary market for sports and concerts on the Web will grow 12 percent annually and reach $4.5 billion in 2012. Berger, of AllShows.com, thinks social networks will add a new, even faster dimension to the business.
It's all come a long way from scalpers standing across the street from stadiums.
