Tickets? Surely, You Jest Demand For Rose Bowl Seating Tops Almost Non-Existent Supply

Congressmen can’t get them. Celebrities are stunned to learn they can’t pluck a few from a secret stash. Even close friends of Tournament of Roses organizers are out of luck this year.

“This is probably the strongest demand I’ve seen (for game tickets) in 17 years,” said Jack French, chief executive of the Tournament of Roses. “I just had two friends ask me for tickets, and they’re highly placed football people. But I just don’t have any.”

Rose Bowl tickets are as scarce as free stadium hot dogs, and that’s inflating the price of $75 tickets up to 10 times their face value.

Prices advertised by ticket brokers range from $325 in the end zone to $800 for something close to the 50-yard line. Several agencies report they have tickets available, but the price has spiraled since late November when No. 1-ranked Michigan and Washington State qualified to play in the game.

“One thing it shows you is the price is probably too low,” said Jim Muldoon, a spokesman for the Pacific-10 Conference, and just one game official who has been overwhelmed with ticket requests. “It’s a bargain compared with other events of this magnitude.”

The Super Bowl, for example, sells tickets for a face value of $275 and $350. But tickets for the Jan. 25 game in San Diego are selling for $1,200 to $3,500 at agencies. The National Football League championship game has a limited supply of tickets for a game with perennial demand - from fans all over the world.

Fans usually place a high demand on Rose Bowl tickets, too, but it’s particularly wild this year for several reasons: the game could decide the national championship; Michigan has a large alumni base, especially in Southern California; and Washington State fans haven’t seen their team in a Rose Bowl in 67 years.

The Rose Bowl sells out every year, as does the Super Bowl, though neither sells many tickets to the general public. To buy a ticket directly for the Super Bowl, you must be one of about 1,000 people selected from a random drawing. The Rose Bowl makes about 2,000 tickets available to the public each year.

The Tournament of Roses and the NFL control ticket allocation to the Rose Bowl and the Super Bowl, respectively, giving first dibs to organizations affiliated with their games. Those universities, conferences and teams typically gobble up the tickets. Of the 2,000 Rose Bowl tickets offered to the public - about 2 percent of the total seats in the stadium - 500 were made available to Pasadena residents and the rest quickly disappeared through Ticketmaster. Phone lines opened at 5 p.m. on Dec. 8 and Ticketmaster was sold out within an hour.

TicketMax, an agency based in Tampa, Fla., advertised Rose Bowl game tickets on the Internet for the first time this year and got bombarded with requests for the brokered tickets. On Nov. 22, after Michigan and Washington State qualified, the agency got 18,000 responses in 48 hours. Normally it gets 300 per day, said owner Gerard Holzmann.

The huge demand caused a glitch in the computer system and TicketMax oversold its supply. Holzmann said he had to credit and refund many customers, and he offered to help them find tickets from other agencies.

Holzmann cautioned buyers to look out for fraudulent tickets.

“A lot of people like to take advantage of individuals who are desperate to go to a game,” Holzmann said. “Make sure you use somebody who’s reputable, and don’t be afraid to ask for references.”

Tickets for Rose and Super Bowls usually have a distinguishing mark that’s difficult to reproduce, such as a hologram, foil printing, or special stock of paper. Despite those precautions, clever copies show up at the gate.

“People get pretty creative out there,” said Kevin Ash, assistant game manager for the Rose Bowl, who also works with security staff at Super Bowls. “They know those tickets can be as good as gold.”

The Tournament of Roses has no control of tickets once they fall into the secondary market, but French has a few tips for prospective buyers.

“They should know the tunnel, the row and the seat number before they pay for a ticket,” French said, “and they should be very concerned about stolen and counterfeit tickets.

“There’s an old saying that a ticket has no home. Once it’s out of the hands of the originator, it can change hands 10 different times if demand pushes it.”

If you arrive at the Rose Bowl with stolen tickets, you could be denied entry, or be placed in an alternate seat, French said.

It can be safer - though more expensive - to go with a reputable broker, said Cathie Lentz Fryer, president of Cerritos Travel, who arranges Rose Bowl and Super Bowl packages.

Ticket hunters might notice a small increase in supply closer to the day of the game. At the last minute, fans change their holiday plans or they can’t get to a game site thousands of miles away, making more tickets available through agencies and hawkers who sell tickets on site.

This week, however, people were still scrambling for tickets with ticket agents.

Callers want to know the price, location and mode of delivery, said Ron Holt, manager of Top of the Line, a ticket agency in Corona, Calif.

He usually hand delivers tickets, though customers also can pick them up at his office.