Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Ron Kantowski explains why a guy from Sheboygan buys UNLV season tickets and how he can profit from those Sam Boyd seats

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS

If you thought Appalachian State's victory at Michigan was a miracle, put this in your Big House and smoke it:

Last year, UNLV sold roughly 5,000 season tickets for football.

The Rebels finished 2-10.

This year, UNLV sold more than 10,000 season tickets for football.

How in Armanti Edwards did UNLV double its season-ticket sales coming off a season in which it couldn't beat a rug or San Diego State, which is even easier?

Here's how: A few years ago, the Rebels talked Wisconsin into coming back here to play another football game. All it took was a $300,000 appearance fee and the assurance that this time, like Motel 6, we'll leave the lights on.

That Tom Bodett guy wasn't around in 2002 when a power failure in the fourth quarter brought the game to a premature halt. Not only did that prevent Wisconsin from covering the spread - the Badgers led 27-7 - the murky light made it difficult to count the gate receipts generated by Wisconsin's loyal legions who had purchased UNLV season tickets to get in.

This how it works when these teams play here. Wisconsin fans snap up the visiting team's ticket allotment within 15 minutes of when they go on sale. This forces those who milk cows and put the whiz in the cheez and the other working stiffs who can't take off to stand in line for tickets to purchase them for the entire Rebels' home season via the Internet.

UNLV doesn't mind, because it's money in the bank. It's a ticket paid for, even if it never gets used again. That will come in handy in November when the Rebels are 1-8 or 2-7 with San Diego State coming to town. And the windfall from this game, which could go as high as $1 million, will help offset all those empty seats in October and November.

Wisconsin fans don't mind, either, because UNLV season tickets cost as little as $90, a steal compared with Camp Randall Stadium prices, and you can almost reach out and touch Bucky Badger from any seat in cozy Sam Boyd Stadium.

So everybody is as happy as a pigskin in slop and a bratwurst on a bun, right?

Right.

But this might be one year when UNLV could have been even happier had it held onto some of those season tickets on the 40-yard line on the visitors' side of the field and sold them as single-game tickets.

Whereas a (season) ticket on the 40 may have cost some guy from Sheboygan $165, after Saturday night it's probably going to wind up in his sock drawer or on Stub Hub. Or maybe even before Saturday night. A lot of people with 608 area codes are asking as much as $550 on the scalping - er, ticket broker - sites.

"Fifty-yard line seat on the Badgers' side," one ad read. "Close enough to touch the Wisconsin players."

I think I'll sit a little higher, thank you. The thought of touching some 330-pound offensive tackle named Szymanski on a 100-degree day doesn't really appeal to me.

A Sun reporter who sits at the desk next to mine purchased two season tickets for the remaining five Rebels home games for a not-so-grand total of $30 from a Wisconsin fan living in Seattle. Even if San Diego State does come here this year, that's a heck of a deal.

So why should UNLV is care if some guy from the Seattle or Sheboygan or Fond du Lac makes a few bucks by reselling a seat that already is paid for?

Because by selling him a primo ticket at less-than-primo prices, it forfeits the ability to resell that ticket for the other five games.

"That's one of the drawbacks," UNLV associate athletic director Jerry Koloskie said about selling season tickets to out-of-state fans who plan to use them only once. "But to me, that's the only drawback."

Here's how a sharp guy from the other Madison - Avenue - might have approached it. Rather than turn that seat on the 40 into a season ticket, he could have asked $80 for it for Wisconsin. And maybe $60 for Hawaii and another $60 for BYU, two more good draws. Then let's say for the final three games, you sell it for face value - $26 - to the first Utah, Colorado State and San Diego State fan who approaches the ticket window and asks for the best seat available.

Using that scenario, the ticket at the bottom of the sock drawer in Sheboygan that UNLV sold for $165 would actually be worth $278.

Koloskie said when Wisconsin played here in 2002, many Badgers fans who purchased UNLV season tickets offered to sell them back to UNLV at a discounted price, or even give them back to UNLV. UNLV refused because selling the same ticket twice didn't seem right. UNLV is asking Badger fans to donate their unused tickets so they can distributed to Clark County students.

But somehow, I don't think that's going to stop the guy from Sheboygan from setting up a satellite UNLV ticket office in the parking lot after the game Saturday night before tossing his Rebels tickets under a favorite pair of argyles.

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