Scalping football tickets in the North West has been going on for decades

Resale of tickets at increased prices is a generally accepted concept. But that was unusual for Northwestern football games until the university instituted a highly competitive ticket request process for students to compensate for the reduced seating at its temporary lakefront stadium.

For the last two home football games, students who couldn’t claim a ticket were left with a somewhat reliable option: haggling with other students who were selling their tickets online. As it turns out, this phenomenon also occurred almost 30 years ago.

On October 23, 1995, The Daily published an article titled “Scalpers Selling $50 Football Tickets to Students.” The previous Saturday, the Wildcats had played the Wisconsin Badgers, and scalpers lined the stadium selling tickets to eager students for sale.

The scalpers competed for customers with prices ranging from $10 to $50, which is worth a whopping $103.45 today. Some even pretended to be customers to find out the current price.

This situation may sound familiar to NU students today. For the last two home football games, students used online group messaging to sell the tickets they claimed for free. On Wildside GroupMe, NU’s student group messaging platform, the days leading up to a game are filled with a never-ending crowd of buyers and sellers. The result is a full-fledged, fluctuating ticket market.

“Nine days before Thursday’s game, a friend of mine sold two of her tickets for $90 apiece,” Weinberg freshman Sonny Noble said. “But on the same day people were also selling them for $15 to $20, so it came down to who got to whom first.”

Although the student ticket market is thriving, it can also be a risky game. Students who request their ticket and then do not use it will face a penalty on their account, making it more difficult to secure tickets in the future.

Perhaps it was a consequence of this policy that the ticket market collapsed last Saturday morning just before the Wisconsin game. Sellers who didn’t close a deal had to try to get rid of their ticket, even though they knew the penalty they would face if it wasn’t used.

Weinberg freshman Rosa Saavedra said she was lucky to be able to sell her ticket two weeks before the game and pocket $100.

“Some sellers wanted to wait until just before the game to sell, hoping to get the highest prices from desperate students,” Saavedra said. “But what actually happened was that the people who owned it and couldn’t sell it started lowering their prices.”

Ahead of last week’s game against Wisconsin, some Wildside GroupMe students urged their classmates to be fair and give away their tickets for free. Others, however, are of the opinion that although there are buyers, there are also sellers.

The 1995 article suggested that the students had accepted their situation. It seems that this is also the opinion of many students today. The multitude of GroupMe resellers meet the demand for tickets. Competition means that if one seller offers a lower price, others have an incentive to match that price.

“I would think it would be unfair if they were price gouging, but it’s the people who want the tickets who want to pay,” said Cheryl Lin, a senior executive at McCormick. “I feel like it’s made people more enthusiastic about going to sporting events and it’s become more of a commodity.”

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