Well, yesterday the UPS guy delivered me my Final Four tickets. How did I get them you ask?
Each year the NCAA sells tickets available to the public through a lottery system. I think there is something like 5,000 tickets or so for sale. You submit your entry, pay for the tickets you hope to buy (I think I put in for 8), pay a $5 admin fee per ticket and then wait a few months to find out if you are a winner. There is around 250,000 requests for tickets so the odds are pretty small you will get them but I guess I got lucky. I got two tickets so they just refunded me the money I had already paid for the other 6.
Pretty good way for the NCAA to make money. They took in about $1.25 million in admin fees plus around $37.5 million for all the ticket requests that they got to hold on to for a few months and collect interest. So just through this process before a ticket is really even sold they are making a few million.
Anyway, I am now in possession of 2 tickets for the Final Four. The tickets are good for the 2 semifinal games and the finals. All in all not too bad for $150 per ticket. That is if you are willing to go to Detroit. And if you are willing to watch just any teams play. If I were to go I would want 2 things: For it to be held in a cool city somewhere I would want to go to even if the games weren’t there, and I would want to watch a team I care about (Gonzaga, Washington, maybe North Carolina). And since there is only a few days from the time the Final Four is set to when the games are played it just isn’t really feasable for me to wait and find out.
So what do I do with the tickets? My intention in buying them was to just resell them (welcome to a capitalist society). Ebay and Stubhub are an option but RazorGator is the official ticket partner for the NCAA Final Four so most likely I would go with that (yet another way for the NCAA to make money on this). But this raises the question of how long do I wait to sell them? Do I sell them right now? Do I wait until the 64 team tourney is set? Wait until it is down to the Sweet 16? I would guess the demand would go up as the tournament wound down but then there is always the chance that I would be stuck holding the tickets. Decisions, decisions…
But I am open to other options. Do I use them as some sort of giveaway for a contest for one of my sports sites? Do I just give them away to someone who wants them? Something for charity? I am open to suggestions. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Joe I know of a lady who fixes the band you play in dinner every monday night, but she would need the airfare and hotel paid for too. Probably not what you had in mind huh!
Don't just give them away! Do something good with them whether for charity or for your own profit. 🙂
Hey Joe, did you ever figure out how you're going to use the tix?