Colorado Ticket Update, Current Options, Analysis

One way or another, I'll be up in here on Oct 2.
(photo courtesy of folsomfield.com)

UPDATE
I called the Colorado ticket office today and confirmed a few things that will be of interest to any Dawgs going to Boulder in 9 weeks time:

1. Single game tickets do indeed go on sale August 2

2. CU has reversed course and now single game tickets will *not* be made available to the Georgia game (annoying considering how reasonably priced they were going to be)

3. Group ticket sales will *not* be available for the Georgia game

4. The only way to purchase a CU-UGA ticket from the CU athletic department is by ordering a full season ticket or a "3PACK"

What is a 3PACK?

While not advertised in any way on their website, the CU ticket office is offering a 'promotion' called the 3PACK, which will allow anyone to purchase a ticket to 3 games: Hawaii, Georgia, and Kansas State. Endzone 3PACK tickets start at $130 and go up (considerably) from there. To view and/or purchase these tickets, go to this page and enter 3PACK in the promotional code field, and then click on "National Championship Pack"

OPTIONS
Here are the currently known ways to get CU-UGA tickets:

1. UGA Athletic Department. The cutoff score was 38,500, which means two things: 1) Colorado didn't give UGA that many tickets and b) only those whose lifetime UGA contributor status is "baller" will be getting tickets from UGA. If you are not one of them, or don't know one of them, I am guessing that more than a few people bought them who are not going, and that there will be a small secondary market for these on the UGA message boards.

2. Colorado Athletic Department 3PACK(Hawaii, Georgia, Kansas State). End zone tickets are $130, while "best available" are currently sideline tickets that run $291 each

3. StubHub.com Their page for Colorado-Georgia currently shows tickets ranging from $106 to $495

4. Bring Cash to Boulder. Below is a seating chart for Colorado home games at Folsom Field. The red sections (2, 3, 101, 102) are labeled "visitors", so this is what CU has given to UGA and where the bulk of UGA fans as well as the band will be sitting. Use this knowledge accordingly in your ticket acquisition hustle.



Additionally, CU has a sweet interactive seating chart which shows you what your view of the game will be (just click on any section of the map to see your view). This is very helpful; spend a few minutes looking at different places around the stadium, which should then inform your seat desirability/willingness to pay matrix as you work on getting your tickets.

ANALYSIS
The 3PACK is pretty overpriced, and should be used only by people with a conservative bent towards the 'secondary' ticket market or those in groups greater than 4 who place sitting together with their friends as a higher priority than cost. In my humble opinion the Hawaii and Kansas State games are very weak and don't have much if any resale value

StubHub is similarly overpriced, although this is almost always the case this far out from a game. Worth bookmarking the page and checking back between now and the game. At current prices for endzone seats ($125 plus stubhub fees), it would be smarter to just get the 3 pack for $130 and then hope to get a little of your money back on the others by selling them at a massive discount on Craigslist or team message/ticket boards.

I think in this case option 4 may well be the best bet, and waiting and playing chicken is probably the way to go at the moment. Worst case scenario is that it is indeed a hot ticket and you end up paying $100-150 per ticket in Boulder the day of the game or day before, but even if you do that is equal to the current options for crappy seats, and I think the odds of this scenario coming to pass are less than 20%.

Frankly, Colorado have been a poor team the past few years and there is no reason to believe that they won't be poor again this year. They have 3 games before we arrive in Boulder: v. Colorado State, @ Cal, v. Hawaii. On paper they beat Hawaii and lose at Cal, and 2 of the last 4 years they have lost to in-state rival Colorado State, so they may well be 2-1 or even 1-2 come October 2. Either of these scenarios should ease the ticket market, especially if they are 1-2: after the crap seasons they've had recently, there's a decent chance their fans will already start to give up on the season and the ticket prices will drop considerably. If you went to Arizona State in 2008 then you know how a hot ticket can lose literally all of its value- an unexpected ASU home loss to UNLV made our extras *literally* worthless. I understand that CU fans are far less fairweather than ASU fans, but you get my point.

Additionally, there is no reason to assume that Georgia will roll into Boulder undefeated at 4-0 and/or even ranked, especially with a freshman quarterback and the fact that we were pretty crap ourselves last year. It is well within the realm of possibility that we lose to South Carolina or Arkansas or at Mississippi State, or more than one of those, taking further shine off the game and thus ticket demand and prices.

This makes me feel that waiting it out at least until the first 2 weeks of the season have been played is the wise move here. Anyhow, agree or not, this is the current situation and these are your options.

See you in Boulder in 9 weeks.


Our last conquest: Arizona State 2008.