Buried behind the excitement of Harbaugh: The TV Show was the Big Ten’s announcement that the horrible MSU-OSU on same years schedule will continue through 2021. That’s a major drag for Michigan ticket sales on years both rivals are away, and compounded by Jack Swarbrick insisting the ND resumption also be on the OSU/MSU schedule because Notre Dame’s athletic director measures success by how much pettiness he can get away with.
That’s all in the future, but it means we’ll have to start getting used to the current setup, and those of us who go into a season without seats must spend odd years watching the fluctuating ticket market for the big rivals. With Michigan State pulling off the upset over Western, and Ohio State getting Baker Mayfield’d, I figured it might be a good time to focus on the giants.
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FIRST AN APP UPDATE…APPDATE?
Yes, this feature is going to have an app. The app will let you put the ticket you’re selling on a map so you don’t have to leave your tailgate or change your route in to pick up or sell a seat on gameday. Wanna see it?
(click embiggens)
The prices will be hovering over the map pins, and those pins will be color-coded based on price (red=expensive, green=cheap, yellow=average) but those things aren’t programmed in yet. We just got the User Input Parameter done this week so we’re still on target to launch after the bye week.
We got 350 people to sign up from last week’s article and would like to get to 1,000 by launch. I haven’t talked about this outside of MGoBlog so for the start at least this will pretty much be our community ticket market. If you go to the site (lead photo by Patrick Barron) and sign up during pre-launch you get to use it for free when it does.
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AND ABOUT RECENT TRADING
As expected there were empty seats in Dallas, and even for last week’s home opener I ended up giving a pair of tickets away to a guy at Demorest’s tailgate. Sellers weren’t letting them go for less than $45 outside the stadium on my way in, but I went in early.
I long expected Air Force to be the dog of the season and so did the school—you had to buy an Air Force ticket to get any of those special packs that included Michigan State. So already there are a bunch of seats for this game that were bought with the intent to sell. If you’re selling I say get what you can ASAP since the Cincy game didn’t exactly instill Michigan fans with a ton of confidence.
They’re still tracking at just under face online. This is that good corner I like right now:
The price table (remember sites that aren’t our sponsor TicketIQ add a ton of fees so don’t email me saying “But I saw it for $390 on StubHub!” because they’ll add $93.60 at checkout). As a rule add 22% to any StubHub price:
| Yard line | Air Force | MICH ST | Rutgers | Minn | OSU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Midfield | $100 (-$67) | $480 (-$60) | $141 (-$21) | $198 (-$29) | $500 (nc) |
| The 35 | $90 (-$2) | $376 (-$20) | $104 (-$31) | $100 ($-56)* | $352 (-$30) |
| The 25 | $66 (-$20) | $333 (-$27) | $71 (-$13) | $115 (nc) | $410 (+$69) |
| Goal line | $65 (-$13) | $360 (+$15) | $58 (-$26) | $107 (nc) | $360 (+45) |
| Endzone | $50 (-$18) | $225 (-$20) | $39 (-$1) | $86 (nc) | $296 (+$51) |
*(I found this on Craigslist so I reported it but the online seats haven’t moved)
The $50 seats for Air Force are on Craigslist and below face. Again I’m very bearish on these—if you get to the game without tickets I bet you can score a pair for $30 easily and $20 if you try hard. Rutgers is sinking rapidly. Minnesota tickets aren’t moving.
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MICHIGAN STATE
I was really hoping State would lose to Western Michigan last weekend.
…
Meanwhile in ticket analysis, I was wondering if such a loss might kickstart the process of Spartan apathy bringing prices for that game down, but historically that hasn’t been true (e.g. when they lost to CMU—or feel free to name your own Sparty loss memories).
But I’ve played MSU ticket markets more than most, and back in the day when they were bad this was still a hot ticket. State fans come out of tradition, many just to tailgate and pick up a seat if they can within their price range. That creates a hard floor for these, and keeps them generally above face value.
Michigan fans however are acting differently. These tickets are moving quickly whenever they get a little below market. I think for every State fan who realizes the good times are over, there’s a Michigan fan who wants to show up just to make sure.
I linked a local guy on Craigslist as an example of where the market for this currently sits: if you want to make sure you get a seat, you have to get it from someone who bought these seats planning to sell them for a profit. Michigan did too good of a job jacking up the price of its packages and season tickets to recoup the value on these.
I think they’ll end up around $200.
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THE GAME
Ohio State did lose, but ticket prices have only gone up. My running theory is the first loss is a warning that your team is vulnerable, but it takes two losses before there’s a major effect, unless it’s a loss to a team that’s really really bad.
Again, Michigan overcharged everyone for Air Force etc. because that was really pricing to the Ohio State tickets. The $300 range has some magnetism, though people are willing to let them go for $250 now, and that’s generally where they end up around the stadium on Game Day.