UMass Athletics and Stubhub

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UMass02
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UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by UMass02 » Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:19 am

During the BU hockey game, I noticed significant blocks of empty seats in the general public areas of the “sold out” Mullins Center. For the previous sellout against Quinnipiac (before the Stubhub deal), the arena was sold out and jam packed. I thought about why those sellouts were so different and I came up with a totally unsubstantiated theory.

Suppose there are a handful of seats remaining for a game. UMass takes the remaining seats, puts them on Stubhub at a huge markup, declares a sell out to artificially drive up the value, and makes more revenue on those tickets than they would have otherwise. This might explain the difference between the two games as the BU game was after the Stubhub deal was announced.

For example, pretend there were 100 seats left. They sell them on Stubhub for $110 each (which was the asking price for the BU game). Even if they only sell 20 of them, they would make several hundred more dollars than selling them directly to fans. Instead of making $15 x 100 = $1500, they make $110 x 20 = $2200. Even if they have to give Stubhub a small cut, they could make more revenue off those seats and declare a sellout with very little added work.

My other theory (which is probably the correct one) is that a scalper bought up inventory during one of those flash sales and put the seats on the secondary market without selling all the inventory.

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Re: UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by Old Cage » Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:59 am

^ 02 - I'm guessing that the scalper theory is correct, no matter when he bought the tickets. I had seen the $110 price, and now wonder if he sold many/any of the tickets. No matter where we are ranked, or how good we are, or who we are playing, I don't think that a regular season college hockey game in WMass is yet a $110 must attend.
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Re: UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by InnervisionsUMASS » Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:12 am

Agreed on the scalper part... I think it's clear that they are getting in on the action.


With that said, if UMass is doing this, as you suggest, that would be very shady. I highly doubt this is happening, but if it was I'd be extremely disappointed in our administration.
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Re: UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by MJatUM » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:02 am

It was happening during the 2013 basketball season as well... I sold an unused ticket to a scalper for above face value walking into the Mullins before the SLU game.

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Re: UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by InnervisionsUMASS » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:10 am

The guy outside the stadium is there whether we are good or bad. Obviously when the teams are good and there is demand, there's going to be a few more of them kicking around.

The mass ticketing via stubhub would likely be from an agency (think Ace Tickets) since they would have the capital to buy tickets in large quantities and would get the tax writeoff for unsold tickets (assuming one can still do that).

I really hope it's the above situation and not from within our department.
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Re: UMass Athletics and Stubhub

Post by UMass02 » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:23 am

InnervisionsUMASS wrote: Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:12 am Agreed on the scalper part... I think it's clear that they are getting in on the action.


With that said, if UMass is doing this, as you suggest, that would be very shady. I highly doubt this is happening, but if it was I'd be extremely disappointed in our administration.
I agree with you. It’s extremely likely a scalper bought up the tickets and couldn’t unload them. Scalpers probably knew the BC and BU games would be popular and thought the Quinnipiac game would not be popular. I really hope my wild theory is incorrect for the same reasons you stated.

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