Braggin’ Rights tickets available, for now
In most years, if you didn’t have tickets for the Braggin’ Rights game a week before tip-off, you had to know somebody with some pull or pay a few extra bucks through a ticket agency.
But the stars have aligned to make tickets readily available for Tuesday’s game between Illinois and Missouri at Scottrade Center. At least for the time being.
With a bad economy, watching on ESPN2 is a reasonable option for many. Both teams are coming off of disappointing seasons and excitement around the programs is down. And the game is being played two days before Christmas for only the third time in the last 16 years.
At Ticketmaster, operators are standing by.
Both schools were offered 8,000 tickets and took only 6,600 to 6,800. As of Wednesday afternoon, Illinois had sold its allotment and a Missouri official estimated that 100 tickets remained in Columbia. With both schools requesting roughly 1,000 fewer tickets than recent years, Ticketmaster has more to sell.
I went online to see what was available, and the Ticketmaster web site offered me two seats in section 331, row K. That’s in the turn of the upper deck but not even in the lowest price range. I didn’t receive a response from Scottrade to find out how many tickets remain but based on my search and a conversation with a Ticketmaster salesperson, it appears there are quite a few in the upper end zones.
Attempts to sell tickets on ebay don’t appear to be lucrative either. This afternoon, a pair of seats in section 310 had a bid of $66, which is below face value, less than 30 minutes before bidding was to end. Many of the tickets being offered don’t have any bids unless they are at face value or below.
None of this is surprising. Attendance for both teams is down with Illinois dropping from an average of 16,618 last season to 14,304 and Mizzou falling from 8,060 to 6,383 thus far. It’s a sign of the times.
Ultimately, maybe fans will realize that these teams are a combined 17-2 and have NCAA Tournament potential and will fill the seats. There are only six ticket shopping days left.
Are you comparing the season attendance averages from the ENTIRE year last year with the average of a handful of non-conference tuneup games this year? If so, that’s a pretty lame way to misuse a ’statistic’… conference games obviously have a much higher attendance rate.