Ticket Watch is Buried in Cement

So…

Hm. Are you thinking…?

YES WE ARE ALL THINKING THIS

As the Maryland running game broke through yet another State slant, it looked on the ticket market like something finally broke inside the Spartan fan soul. Ticket prices plummeted by $100.

They’ve been hovering around $140-$150 (when you include fees and such) for a pair upstairs or high up (the rows go only to the 40s) in the endzone. It’s a weird market since there are a bunch of tickets moving, but for the most part the sides are kind of ickily staring at each other, waiting for someone to make a move. Spartan ticket holders are hoping for someone to bite at $200, or if they go down to at least sell to someone who’ll promise to go in green.

But few Spartan fans without a ticket are going to want one now—Michigan fans are the vast majority of the market. Many are playing the waters, or waiting for the price to come down enough to justify it to certain parties who were hoping that Saturday could be used for de-leafing the gutters.

So no, this isn’t a game where the price can drop below $100 before the panicky moment on Friday afternoon.

[After the jump: Advice if you want to go, and whether you REALLY want to go]

SCAM WARNING: CAREFUL AROUND PRINTED TICKETS

Michigan State, more than any other place I’ve scalped, is rife with fake tickets. Scalpers will have these everywhere for expensive games, but my Sparty friend reports that he was taken in twice by regular-looking fans who sell second copies(and that’s to a fellow Spartan), and I’ve encountered a few I didn’t buy from on various trips.

The first rule is don’t buy a printed ticket. If you’re desperate and somebody’s offering an already-printed ticket, you can demand they go in with you and a witness—they probably will say no and then you can at least be sure you don’t want to buy it.

EVEN BETTER BUYERS BEWARE

My trips to Spartan Stadium have never been fun. This is a cement building in a sea of more cement that packs a sizeable portion of its fans into badly designed upper decks, and makes the rest wait in lines under steel girders to pop through one of too few tiny holes into the bowl.

The result is a cattle jam if cows bathed in Axe and thought that said “Ann Arbor is a whore!” instead of “moo.” State fans are a green and white dwarf next to the red giant of fan douchedom in Columbus, but they’ll still rip your hat off and chuck it over the side if they’re unfriendly, or try to explain why only someone who went to a school should ever root for it if they aren’t.

I lost my hat in that way when I sat in the student section with my brother in 1999. Least Eligible Player Ever Plaxico Burress was so uncoverable Michigan draped David Terrell on him for the second half. On the way out my brother reminded me I hadn’t paid him back for the ticket; I handed over $80 in twenties as soaked in rum, coke, and tobacco spit as I was.

I scalped at kickoff then missed a big chunk of the 2007 game while bottled up  in a sea of body spray and sad attempts to use “Appalachian State” in a sentence on the ramp to the second level. We were shoved so close together that I fortunately didn’t spill the contents of my wallet when an obviously practiced mosh pitter took the opportunity to give me his best shoulder. It took the last two cell strands holding Henne’s own together and Hart’s heroics to avoid losing to John L. Smith’s players in their first tilt under Dantonio.

In 2013 I bought a ticket for $225 from our MGoticket partner, plus $20 or something I threw down for my brother-in-law’s really nice tailgate. The tailgate was only partially ruined by  someone’s drunk girlfriend following me around to yell “Wolverines Suck!” in my ear. But my rain shell couldn’t stop the freezing drops from penetrating to my rib cage any better than Hoke’s offensive line could prevent a Double-A Gaps blitz from reaching Gardner’s, and

In 2014 I was offered a ticket for $100 for the Dave Brandon Sunshine Special. I watched on TV with a room full of Spartans instead.

Even in bad years for Michigan State things go awry. There was Clockgate, a gift of a winning FG in 2005…even the 51-carry Chris Perry game State got a few breaks late in the game, and had the ball down a touchdown with a minute left. In my fantime, the last comfortable visit I had to East Lansing was 1997. I was a senior in high school, came without tickets, and ended up watching at the Okemos Red Robin because nobody would sell theirs.

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THE STRATEGY FOR STATE

Let’s all review what drives the secondary ticket market:

1. Face value
2. Away fans interest/proximity/rivalry
3. Home team interest
4. Weather

Face is a magnet—the nearer the actual market gets to face, the more tickets will go for face. State’s season ticket packages are WAY less than Michigan’s—they started at $343 for 7 games, plus a minimum PSD of $50 (those who skipped it the last few years didn’t get seats). This year that included Wisconsin, BYU, Michigan, and Ohio State. They sold out super-fast as speculators realized the latter two could probably pay for the whole bunch.

Away fan interest for this game has been super-high from the time they went on sale, which is why the price again shot up to the $250 range. Those selling their tickets in that market were those who couldn’t go to the game but bought season tickets, and those who bought the tickets intending to make a profit from them. The market moved slowly. Michigan fans are going to keep this high, since the lower the prices drop the more Michigan fans will want to go.

Home team interest is flagging, but still not really bad. The last few days we watched the home team effect, as Spartan fans got yet another blow in the fan dong against Maryland, and those holding onto tickets but already losing the will to go were pushed to put them on sale. I think they’ve been thinking of selling for awhile, but there was no reason to offload until this week put a hard deadline on it. Tickets were on sale for $250, but not really selling.

Still, State fans bought these tickets planning on going. They’ve had a good thing to watch for awhile now. And hell, they looked like a 7-5 team that barely got by Rutgers when we faced them last year, and you never know when their rabbit’s foot will turn up a 28-point swing in officiating or something. This is Mark Dantonio versus Michigan, after all, and even John L. Smith managed to play the Wolverines tough every time.

Weather could change that though. Right now there’s a 30% chance of rain—temperature should be a fall-ish 55. For tickets purposes the rain is expected to come Friday, which might see a dip in prices then as the older fans put the spread and drive to East Lansing against the strength of their rainjackets and decide this one’s not worth it.

So online I’d target a Thursday or Friday buy at about $125 (after fees if you’re using a fee-charging outlet) if you’re sure you want to go, and jump on anything that gets to $100. At the game I’d expect you’ll be able to find people asking for $200, not getting it, and settling for $80 or $100 near kickoff. However I don’t think there will be that many available by then. If you’re serious about getting them cheap, Craigslist Detroit should have a few pop up in the morning—the ones with phone numbers are desperate to offload; the ones who make you email aren’t.

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OHIO STATE FALLOUT

None so far. Though I believe the effect that week is a cumulative thing. By that I mean the prices won’t drop THAT much right after the first loss because people aren’t going to race to put their tickets on sale at that moment. They’re a shadow market, waiting for something to make them change their minds, or at least to raise the price some.

Meanwhile Michigan fans are convinced the world revolves around that day in November. We’re going to keep prices high until Ohio State fans who planned to dump their tickets all along realize they have to dump their tickets. My estimate for $250 holds—they’re at $300 now.

YESTERDAY’S TRADING

Homecoming kept prices within magnetic distance of face value—$85-$100 depending on section—and the weather was coldish beautiful, so they only went down to about $85 online before it was too late for that. Around the stadium people were asking for face an hour before kickoff, and deals were struck at $50 about a half hour to.

That Illinois price is almost certainly the highest ticket prices will be the rest of the season for a Michigan home game.

THINGS IN THE FUTURE

Maryland is a dog that’s still sitting at an unsustainable $80-$86, i.e. face value. Indiana finally began to climb but the Northwestern loss probably depressed the Hoosier fans interested in coming this time. Again, I’m bullish on that one, since this is a special group of seniors and a nice autumn day to wish them farewell will be hard to stay away from. I also could easily see Indiana putting on a three-game win streak (they get Rutgers and Maryland, then Penn State at home)—if they beat Penn State some will remember they’ve got a shot in this one.

Ohio State might not make a playoff with one loss, but that Game is still setting up to be the biggest since 2006. The ceiling is off, but I thought the ceiling was that $300 they were being priced at when everyone thought we were on a collision course. Slightly depressing that is the game’s at Ohio Stadium, where even elderly Michigan fans are highly likely to be assaulted, and 100% likely to be peppered with some nastiness—you might say that you can take that kind of thing but remember the market is set by everybody, and not everybody is set up to put up with the tweet-at-recruits kind of people whose behavior gets encouraged in Columbus. $250 still seems like the spot.

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CHEAP TIP

I call it the “I ONLY HAVE…” trick (it could use a better name) and it works about half the time. You hide most of your cash elsewhere and put what you want to pay (within reason) for a ticket in your wallet. When you start negotiating a ticket price, start lower than what you have, and they will say no, and then dip into your wallet and once you’re pulling out $1’s to get close to what they asked, they’ll go for it.

Buying outside the stadium only works close to gametime. An hour or so before, the people selling are usually expecting to get face, or to skip the online market and deal in cash. For MSU especially you’ll meet a bunch of people who held onto their extras expecting to put a Michigan fan over the barrel.

Don’t try to haggle with someone in that position. It’s doubtful they’ll be there the whole hour, but they will probably make a sale to someone who also just wants to get it over with. The timer before a ticket becomes a piece of paper is your friend, but it’s a better friend if there are going to be a lot of unused seats. I don’t think there will be many for Michigan State or Ohio State, but Indiana and Maryland should be able to yield a really cheap one at the gate.