By Shula Neuman
The National Football League season is in full swing, and once again, ticket prices are higher than ever.
Fans who pay anywhere from $50-250 for a single ticket may grouse about the price, but Daniel Elfenbein, Ph.D., assistant professor of organization and strategy in the Olin School of Business, said football teams routinely under-price their tickets — and online ticket scalpers are reaping the benefits.
That teams sell tickets at prices far lower than their market value may seem to contradict economic logic.
On average, people who buy NFL tickets from scalpers online pay more than 50 percent above a ticket's face value. Markups are even higher in football-loving locales such as Green Bay and New England, Elfenbein said.
Despite the disparity between face value and street value, Elfenbein said it actually makes sense that owners don't jack up ticket prices even more.
"With that kind of a markup on the street, the owners are leaving a lot of value on the table," Elfenbein said. "By keeping the tickets below market price, the owners are more likely to fill the stadium, creating more opportunities for concession sales.
"Parking troubles aside, people really seem to enjoy going to full stadiums — the excitement level is that much greater. On the flip side, since most NFL teams have received some sort of public funding for stadium construction or other services, raising prices to levels that the market would support might cause people to rethink the use of public funds."
Elfenbein's conclusions are derived in part from a study he conducted on the impact anti-scalping laws have on people selling regular-season NFL tickets online.
He examined more than 100,000 transactions processed by eBay and more than 100,000 "ask" prices for tickets sold via ticketsnow.com, a leading Internet-based ticket reseller.
Although illegal in many states, ticket scalping online is quite hearty. Elfenbein said scalpers selling tickets to games in states with anti-scalping laws were able to command higher prices and higher markups over face value than in states without those laws. Yet at the same time, anti-scalping states didn't see as much online trading.
Elfenbein said it's relatively predictable how much over face value a ticket will cost.
"There's a distinct pattern to how much more fans are willing to pay for a ticket depending on when it's sold during the season and how well the team is doing," Elfenbein said. "But it also depends on which team we're talking about.
"In the data that I've looked at, being 6-4 rather than 4-6 raises the price that a fan is willing to pay by about $24 on average. It really tells you a lot about the psychology of being a sports fan." Source>>>
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posted by ADMIN @ Thursday, November 10, 2005
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