Trying to get the cheapest price for a ticket to a sporting event has become harder than the Riemann hypothesis. It makes a man go crazy, as I can attest.
Let me take you back to Sunday, March 18. It was the day after a day I call Conference Championship Saturday, where the six conferences in top-flight men's college hockey all hosted their title games and auto-bids and, in a crucial difference from selecting at-large teams for college basketball, the rest of the field is objectively decided. I detailed how Minnesota became The Last Team Out through a series of title game results under the Gopher men's hockey entry in this particular Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey. Moreover, North Dakota became The Next-To-Last Team Out. And with this year's Frozen Four (the Final Four in college hockey) being played at the Xcel Energy Center tonight and Saturday, this season's NCAA Tournament lost the two biggest fanbases from the area.
That meant that, at least in my mind, prices on secondary ticket markets, such as StubHub and SeatGeek would crater, or at least be as cheap as they would ever be. So in the morning, before I was to go get a free birthday mocha at Dunn Bros. and seeing the Adios Utopia exhibit at the Walker (on its last day, no less) and attending the Women's Frozen Four Final, I went to both sites to see what the prices are.
Last time the Frozen Four was at the X, back in 2011, I went to the arena and bought a ticket to both semifinals off the street for $125. So my big goal was to see if I could get semifinals tickets for less than that. I figured that people were savvy enough to know that neither the Golden Gophers nor the Fighting Hawks would be in the tourney, so the prices would be cheap. Well, not as much as I thought they were. On SeatGeek I saw a seat, second level on one end of the arena for $115. Not an ideal spot to watch a hockey game -- I've become somewhat of a bougie when it comes to watching hockey games -- but my main focus was to just get in for as cheap a price as possible.
I then went over to StubHub. The main difference between StubHub and SeatGeek is that on SeatGeek, you can see prices for tickets without or with fees. You can on StubHub too, but you have to wait until you select a seat. You know that intermediate step where you are sent to a page where you put in your credit card information? That's when you get to see the real total for a ticket on StubHub. Very annoying, I think.
I saw a StubHub ticket that intrigued me, but I wanted to see what the price of the seat with fees was going to run me. If it was low enough, I'd buy it. And since I have an account with StubHub, I might as well sign in in case I wanted to buy it. So I did all that, I selected the ticket, and when I got the "confirm payment" page, I saw that, with fees, the price of this seat, on StubHub, was $123.50. Well, that's lower than the $125 I paid seven years ago, I thought. And the prices of these seats are only going to go up once fans know where their teams are playing. Yet this was more than a fortnight away from the games. Should I wait and risk the prices edging or skyrocketing higher? Or should I jump in now and risk seeing the prices shrink or plummet lower?
I was hemming and hawing for a good hour, lying sideways and putting so much weight on my arm that I cramped. Finally, I felt that the prices of the tickets I saw had already built in the lack of local interest and that they were not going to go any lower. So with the fees, I thought it was cheap enough for me to buy that ticket. On StubHub.
Partly as a reflex, I did the Alt + Tab thing ... where I went back to the SeatGeek site ... and saw the ticket I was looking at ... for $115. Oh. My. Fucking. God. Unforgivable Wetness, you fucking idiot, you just paid eight bucks more for the same goddamn ticket -- that ticket that was right in front of you! Stupid, Stupid, STUPID!!!
Man, all I can say is that I got so tortured over whether or not I should buy a ticket or not that I totally forgot that I was looking for tickets in two places, so that when I decided that yes, I will buy, I just jumped in and bought the ticket at the screen I was looking at. I had forgotten about comparing prices between StubHub and SeatGeek. That's a weakness of mine.
But wait -- there's more. Once I realized my mistake, I spiraled into a self-shaming panic. I had the whole house to myself, my parents were in the other hemisphere, and my heart was pounding through my chest out as if I'm about to get caught murdering somebody. And in an effort to "make things right," I doubled down on my fuck-up by buying that cheaper ticket at SeatGeek. So I went from a chance of not purchasing a ticket to purchasing two to the same event at a total fucking cost of $338.50. My God, I am a fucking mess.
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Suffice it to say that move or moves colored my whole day. I really didn't think of going to the Walker, but after I breathed in deeply and realized that I might be out more than $300, I figured what's another ten bucks doing a hour-long drive-by of Cuban protest art? (Like I said in the previous blog post, I really would prefer to linger and wander through an exhibition, and even though I'm glad I went, I wish I had devoted more time looking at Adios Utopia.) And while the Women's Frozen Four Final was great, half the time I was just staring at the ice and going, "My God, what the hell did I do?"
As the hours passed I calmed down. The problem crystallized; I had bought two tickets and I could not cancel either order, so my plan was to sell one at face value (or a few cents above), and if that doesn't work, well, I'll have to eat the difference and hope that I remember this masochistic, self-inflected gunshot wound to my wallet from now on.
Nevertheless, I was going to raise holy hell about these tickets anyway. So at work the next day, I put up the more expensive ticket I bought on StubHub back for sale. In the meantime, I was going to talk to customer service to see if I could find a loophole, or some way, to get back my money. When I got an agent on to chat, I spewed out a bullshit lie about my nephew screwing around on my computer and inadvertently buying this ticket for me. That didn't work. Then I looked at the instructions I was given and saw that the StubHub ticket was going to be sent to me through mobile, but only through an account I set up on either the StubHub or TicketMaster app. I tried that -- at this point I just wanted to get the ticket in order to properly put the ticket up for sale -- but I couldn't download either application because my iPhone is too old. The next day I went to StubHub chat again with the purpose of complaining that I did not know that I needed to download an app to get a ticket, and as such I would not be able to get the ticket unless they could tell me another way.
That's when something interesting happened. The agent I spoke to that Monday and the one I spoke to on this occasion (on Tuesday) both said to look through my e-mail for a message, in particular one with a specific Subject Line. I don't remember what that Subject Line is, but I did not see it. That's when he asked for my phone number; he said he was going to call me later after notifying the seller about my problem. (In the meantime I asked again whether I could just get the order cancelled; no dice. Hey, I have to be persistent, right?)
Someone left me a message on Google Voice; I returned it when I had free time. The ticket, I have come to understand, was supposed to come through this e-mail both agents told me to look for; there is a button in that message to "accept," and then I am able to get the ticket, via e-mail or another app I could download or, well, something. Anyway, there should have been an e-mail sent but there wasn't. And the agent who left me that voicemail said that the reason it was not sent was because of a mistake on the seller's part. The way it was told to me (if I understand it in the first place) is that the seller entered a Seat Number for transmission to me through that e-mail that was different from the one he or she put up for sale. That is a discrepancy that StubHub could not automatically overlook.
"So," the agent said, "Are you OK with getting a ticket with a seat number different from the one you agreed to?"
Well shit, here's the loophole from heaven I was looking for! "Well, since I've said that I don't want this ticket in the first place ... no, I am not OK with buying this ticket!"
"OK," the guy said, and I then I couldn't really understand him because he was mumbling. But he started the process of issuing me a refund. I think he said that transactions that, and I quote, "cause confusion" can in fact be stopped and reversed. I needed to go back to my cubicle and bring the ticket down from selling; and in that process I got disconnected from that agent so I had to call another one after I did take it down. But I just checked my American Express, and yes, I got a refund. I got that miracle I needed, and it turns out that it probably would have happened even if I didn't cajole and complain. Yep, sometimes the breaks go your way!
So I'm off the hook for the more expensive StubHub ticket and am more than willing to pay for the cheaper ticket I found and bought on SeatGeek. I could download it because it goes to FlashSeats, a ticket app that I do have and that still does work on my iPhone 4. And I'm all ready and set to go to tonight's games and, hopefully, scalp for a really cheap seat for Saturday's title game!
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But wait. There's more.
Ever since I put that episode behind me, I have been looking at SeatGeek and StubHub off and on to look at ticket prices. I couldn't help it, I was curious. I had to know if I did the right thing buying so far away from the Frozen Four, or if I made a mistake.
For the record, the prices didn't really change after that Sunday, or really until the tournament began later that week. After that weekend, when the Frozen Four teams were determined, tickets in general went up a tick. And they sort of stayed up there through, I believe, this past Sunday or so, which was the last time I looked at those scalper sites.
But before I started this blog post I checked again. And goddammit, I should have waited. As of right now, I could get an upper-level, one-end-only ticket for $77.85. The hockey tournament took the week off to make way for the men's Final Four, so I had no freakin' clue why prices would crater when there were no games going on. Then I remembered that the NCAA released more tickets on Monday that were allotted tickets returned by the four particpating schools, so maybe there's enough of a glut of supply to depress prices. Oh, and irony or ironies? That $78 ticket is on StubHub, the scalper site I went through so much hell with (although, I have to say, both Amir and Jamal treated me really well. I hope I have their names right, because they helped me get out of this jam of my own making). Including fees I could have gotten a ticket for $35 less if I just held my piss and waited. And really, all this ennui from the soul was for naught.
(metaphorically slaps head on table till I bleed)
It is in that vein where I currently am gauging getting a ticket for Saturday's title game. My thought was to do something similar to what happened in 2011. When I bought a ticket to the semifinals off the street (for $125), I was offered a ticket to the championship game for, like, $150. The guy said that once North Dakota, which was playing Michigan in the nightcap, wins, that ticket is going to go up to $250 -- "at least." I took my chances, and after they got upset by the Wolverines, I milled about on the street and cried out, "Looking for one for Saturday!" Ten feet away from me, a girl looked in my direction, then tugged at the sleeve of presumably her father. They were NoDak fans, and they were looking to sell their tickets because they were hightailing it, I assume, back to Grand Forks. Right place, right time, and hey, I was persistent. I got one of their tickets for $50. I still consider it the best on-the-street ticket I've ever bought.
However, as of several minutes ago, there is one ticket -- nosebleed, at one end only -- that is selling on StubHub for, with fees, less than $50. The delivery system is UPS, so I really have until today to buy it, because if I wait till tomorrow, how is it going to get delivered? So should I just get it, and risk buying it too high, like with the semifinal ticket? Or should I stick with my original plan, which is just go to the X tonight, shout that I need a ticket for Saturday, and pray that a disgruntled fan of the losing team sells me one for dirt cheap, and risk not getting one for dirt cheap?
(metaphorically slaps head on table till I go unconscious)
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