GATORS

Title Game Tickets Tough To Find

By ANDY STAPLES The Tampa Tribune

Published: Dec 26, 2006

GAINESVILLE - Michelle Rosenthal minced no words when she summed up her search for a ticket to the Jan. 8 national championship game between the University of Florida and Ohio State.

"It [stinks]," said Rosenthal, a 2003 Florida graduate who now attends law school at George Washington.

Like many Florida and Ohio State fans, Rosenthal has a plane ticket and a hotel room booked in the Phoenix area but no way into the game. She hopes to find a ticket between now and then, but tickets selling for $500 to $5,000 each on the secondary market have left Rosenthal with a nasty case of sticker shock.

Fans such as Rosenthal have a few options if they want to have a ticket in hand when they reach Arizona. They can try to bid for tickets on an auction site such as eBay. They can scan classified ads in newspapers and on sites such as Craigslist.com. Or they can buy through a ticket site such as StubHub.com, which connects ticket sellers and ticket buyers and guarantees the money and tickets will change hands as planned.

No matter what option they choose, those fans can expect to pay through the nose.

Sean Pate, a spokesman for StubHub, said sales for this game have topped every event in his company's six-year history. That includes World Series games, Super Bowls and major concerts. As of Friday, the average price for a Florida-Ohio State ticket purchased through StubHub was $1,408.

That number surprised Pate, who thought last year's national title matchup between Texas and Southern California generated more pregame buzz.

"Certainly, if you're a Gator fan, you're fired up about it," Pate said. "Nationally, it's maybe just one notch below what we saw last year with USC and Texas, but that's certainly not translating into slower sales."

StubHub isn't the only Web destination for ticket seekers. As of early Saturday morning, eBay had more than 100 listings for tickets. With about 14 hours remaining in the auction, the top bid for a pair of lower-level tickets in the corner of one end zone was $1,625. One seller even offered a block of 10 lower-level seats near the 40-yard line for $50,000.

Katie Zimmer has no intention of paying such prices. Zimmer, a Tampa resident and past president of the Pinellas County Gator Club who has had Florida season tickets for 25 years, has burned up the phone lines. She has called everyone she knows who might have a ticket they can't use. She even called USC's alumni club looking for sellers after the Trojans' loss to UCLA helped the Gators make the national title game.

Zimmer said she hopes to get a ticket for close to face value, and she doesn't intend to pay more than a few hundred dollars. Her top tip: Try to find a friend who knows a vendor, because corporations get lots of tickets to big games.

"We're going," Zimmer said of her group, which includes 15 fans who plan to share a five-bedroom rental house in Arizona. "We have faith."

Trey Flynn, a 2002 Florida graduate, also has faith. He said he and his fiancee wrangled face-value tickets to last year's Final Four, and he hopes to pull off a similar feat in the desert. But as of Friday, Flynn didn't sound very optimistic.

"We have exhausted every method to get tickets," Flynn said.

Unfortunately, a face-value ticket is a pipe dream for most prospective buyers, but StubHub's Pate said prices should fall somewhat. He said most of the listings on his site - about 2,000 tickets total - will come down by Jan. 4.

"That's quite a bit of inventory," Pate said. "The people that are trying to sell those tickets will probably start to get a little bit antsy right around New Year's."

The sellers won't be the only antsy ones. Rosenthal, the law student, said she worries about counterfeit tickets and other scams. In fact, she sniffed out one such scam while checking out an ad on Craigslist offering lower-level tickets at $840 apiece.

After the seller sent Rosenthal copies of what he claimed were his driver's license and passport, Rosenthal entered the name on the documents into the Google search engine. She found an e-mail address, then contacted the man whose name matched the documents. He informed Rosenthal that his identity had been stolen several years ago and that he intended to contact the FBI about the person who placed the ad.

Buyers have only a few ways to determine if they're buying tickets from a legitimate source. If using eBay, they can check the seller's history. A high number of transactions combined with a feedback rating near 100 percent typically signifies a trustworthy seller, but there are no guarantees unless the seller offers one. StubHub's Pate said his site - which can sell tickets until kickoff, thanks to a pickup site in Glendale, Ariz. - guarantees that buyers will get a refund if their tickets turn out to be counterfeit.

Despite all the options available for securing a ticket before arriving in Arizona, Rosenthal said she may use the oldest method of finding a ticket. She may simply go to the stadium on Jan. 8 and hope to find a deal.

"I've sort of come to the conclusion," she said, "that right before the game is the most logical time for prices to come down."

Reporter Andy Staples can be reached at (352) 262-3719 or astaples@tampatrib.com.