Why does everybody want to crack down on ticket scalping by students. The person wo buys the ticket is happy because he got what he was willing to pay for. The student seller is happy because he now has extra money to take his girlfriend to dinner and a move, buy a bag of pot or fix hos broken car or whatever. And its part of the educational experience that college is all about. The student seller has learned a valuable lesson about how the free market system works even if he is not an economics major. Its a win-win situation for all parties.
If LSU were truly concerned about loyalty to free-market economics, then the AD would simply auction off all game tickets, including box suites, season, and student tickets, instead of setting flat rates. Even a distribution service like Ticketmaster would be unnecessary, since the AD has already replaced actual, physical student tickets with printable PDF file tickets for several years now. No middlemen, the AD reaps all the profits, and people pay exactly what they're willing to for tickets without extra markup. Complaints about no-shows would drop off since no one wants to waste their money, and the TAF point counting game goes out the window. The only remaining scalpers would be those selling to people unfortunate enough to wait until the last minute. Why allow 3rd party scalpers, sorry I mean "brokers", to make all the money from the flat rate model when that could go directly to the AD's coffers?
LSU, like all other big time college football programs already charges what the market will bear. Its a balance between not charging enough and charging too much and having unsold tickets. The marketing experts in the AD's office are very skillful at determining the best price point. Thats where the scalpers come into play. There will always be an aftermarket. Pay too much for USL tickets and they take the risk of losing money by not being able to sell them all. Tickets for a game between LSU and a highly ranked opponent will always sell for a premium , but even there the scalper/entrepreneur takes a risk. What if Florida despite their high preseason ranking were to fall flat on their faces in the nex 3 games and come into Baton Rouge with a 3-5 record? The tickets would drastically drop in value. LSU is getting exactly as much revenue from ticket sales as they want to get. If they wanted to hold on to premium seats and hope that LSU and Florida would be ranked #1 and #2 at gametime and charge $500 and up apiece for the tickets they are free to do so but they are way too smart to gamble on such a situation happening. So who really cares if a scalper makes a few bucks on his investment. I would never pay $500 to $2000 for a ticket to any football game unless I was very wealth but there are people with the money and the willingness to do so. There would be no shows to games like USL and LA Tech even if the tickets were free
For the sake of simplicity I was assuming that 1. LSU sets ticket prices for all games at the start of the season, 2. I'm ignoring the TAF priority point system for season tickets and looking at tickets going on sale to the general public just like, say, concert tickets, and 3. not talking about individuals initially intending to go to the game in question who later decide to sell at a profit for whatever reason. Maybe this is where my line of thinking breaks down. If brokers are buying up all of the prime seats and most of the remaining tickets, the price isn't what the market would bear, it's merely a reflection of what brokers are willing to pay for them. Brokers often have inside collaborators in ticket offices to help them gain first access and plenty of others to buy tickets in person and online the second they go on sale. Unless it's a coincidence that tickets go on sale 8:00 AM and sell out by 8:01. If the public doesn't have a fighting chance, by definition it's entirely an aftermarket for the fans. Why should I care whether the scalpers make their bottom line? If it's such a risky situation for them, they'd get out of the business and allow actual fans to buy their tickets from LSU at face value without having to also pay for the scalpers' 200%-300+% markup. Under the auction model I brought up, LSU doesn't even have to worry about setting an optimum base price. Put the tickets on sale 2 weeks before the game for, say, $100 as an example (it can be higher or lower based on whatever the LSU marketing wizards want), and conclude the auction a week later. The risk of Florida dropping like a rock and people overpaying is minimized, and if the buyer thinks he paid too much, well, whose fault is that? True, but if you end up paying $100 more for Arkansas or Auburn, you'd definitely think twice about simply not showing up if something comes up and you can't sell your ticket beforehand. FWIW, I think the main reason schools don't go to such a system is that it would remove incentives for fans to join booster organizations. Who needs a TAF membership requiring me to donate a wing to the engineering building before I even get the opportunity to purchase top notch seats when they can simply outbid everyone in a general auction? I don't have access to the numbers, but I would think the TAF donations are ultimately a bigger moneymaker for LSU than actual ticket sales. Regardless, the point being made was about a true free-market solution for ticket sales and I just outlined the simplest, most effective one I could think of to accomplish that.
