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Tickets 101: sports on a budget
Big league deals and entertaining alternatives put sporting events within everyone's reach
Brian Jefferson still remembers the day when he and his dad drove nearly 300 miles to watch the Wisconsin Badgers take on the Iowa Hawkeyes in football. Iowa was terrible that year and the two found no shortage of eager scalpers willing to sell their tickets near face value.
Fast forward 12 years and the two made the pilgrimage again. The Temple Owls, 2005’s version of the Iowa Hawkeyes, were a pathetic team. Walking up to Camp Randall without tickets, the two encountered the first scalper selling tickets at a blistering $50 a pop. Way too much. The second scalper was even more expensive, as was the third. After circling around the stadium, the two eyed Regent Street and decided it would be cheaper and better to watch the game at Jordan’s Big Ten Pub than drop more than $100 to see Wisconsin’s third- and fourth-string players wreak havoc on the Owls all day.
“Tickets were selling for over $50 apiece,” Jefferson says. “And this was for pathetic Temple. Last time I checked, they were in the ESPN list of 10 worst teams. “Jordan’s [Big Ten Pub] is no Camp Randall, but at least the beer was cheap.”
Skyrocketing ticket prices aren’t limited to just college athletics. The past decade has witnessed a sharp rise in ticket prices for college athletics along with professional and even high school sports.
School districts across Wisconsin have been forced to deal with the rising costs of sports. Parents and students expect their equipment and facilities to be top notch, which shows in the admission price for many high school sports. The Madison School Board, facing a $10 million budget deficit, raised ticket prices to $6 for adults and $3 for students in May 2003. The increase is among the highest in the state and leads the way for the Big Eight Conference. Although UW-Madison may charge high prices to their athletic events, most high schools do not. Bill Tourdot, former principal at Viroqua High School and current principal at Sparta High School, said prep sports can be a lot more exciting than college or professional sports because students play because they want to and because they enjoy the sport.
“The athletes involved are in it because they want to be and for the fun of it,” Tourdot says. “First and foremost, to them it’s not yet a job or an obligation as it has become in most colleges and in the pros. The human error factor makes it more exciting because they are not as perfect, so you never know what to expect.”
While high school athletics may be exciting, most would agree that college and professional sports offer more excitement because of the faster pace and bigger names. However, with college and professional ticket prices seemingly rising faster than the price of gas, young professionals might conclude the likes of Miller Park, Lambeau Field, the Bradley Center or Camp Randall Stadium might be out of reach. Wrong bet.
“Most parks you go to these days have some sort of deal,” said Dan Fuhrmann, a UW-Madison alum. “In Colorado, they have seats on rocks in center field for only a few bucks and the Uecker seats with their obstructed views in Miller Park are only a dollar.”
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| cheap seats: Young professionals looking to
get tickets for a football game can usually find student tickets for half the price of regularly priced seats. UW-Madison student tickets for the 2005 season were only $109. photo: derek montgomery |
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fanfare: a gallery of sports fans |
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curb magazine 2005: balance for wisconsin's young professionals
