PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY: CADY HERRING
The undefeated Ole Miss Rebels will take on the also undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide this Saturday at a sold out football game. The Rebels are currently ranked in the AP Poll top 25, and with ESPN’s College GameDay scheduled to be in the Grove this Saturday, many people are ready for the classic rivalry game between Ole Miss and Alabama. For some, however, finding an affordable ticket has been the biggest challenge.
Vaught-Hemingway Stadium currently seats 60,580 fans, and every ticket offered through the Ole Miss Ticket Office has been sold. Despite the university having sold all of the original tickets, the demand is still high and prices are steadily rising.
Matthew Cook, manager of ticket operations at the university, said the struggle for finding a ticket is based on the amount of people wanting to attend the game.
“The main cause for the increase in ticket prices is supply and demand,” Cook said. “Ole Miss sold out of all tickets, so the only way to acquire tickets to this game was to use the secondary ticket market.”
The secondary ticket market includes online ticket sellers like StubHub and Ticket Network. Tickets on both sources have starting prices just above $200. This game in particular has tickets at the highest price of the season. Prices for this game are more than $80 over annual games such as homecoming and the Egg Bowl.
StubHub’s tickets are selling fast. The tickets selling for the lower amount, close to $200, are the seats in the north end zone and corner K. These are the sections that traditionally host the visiting team fans. Rebel fans will have to pay up towards $300 to $650 to be closer to the south end zone, near the student section. Seats in the actual south end zone are $650 to well over $1,000.
7,500 seats in the stadium are reserved as part of the student section. The past few years student season tickets, loaded onto student IDs, have sold out.
In response to high demand for tickets, students have begun selling their IDs for home games. Some students like freshman Mallory Steiner considered selling her ID.
“It’s a good way for a college student to make some extra cash,”Steiner said. “My family always gets our regular season tickets, and I also have my own student section tickets on my ID. I definitely thought about selling my ID, but I need it for so many other things that it seems too risky.”
Student season tickets were sold for $115. At games like Louisiana-Lafayette on Sept. 13, students sold their IDs for as low as $15. IDs for the game this Saturday are selling for around the same prices as the online venues, giving successful sellers a profit.
The university has a policy prohibiting students from sharing their IDs and threatens disciplinary action if caught. Cook does not condone students selling their IDs for extra cash.
“Students should be aware that their ID does not just contain their tickets,” Cook said. “It contains a lot of other personal information and access that could possibly be jeopardized.”
Both the university and the state of Mississippi prohibit the scalping, or selling tickets for more than face value, of any admission ticket to any athletic contest. The revenue of all ticket sales through the university goes toward the operations of the Athletics Department and athletic programs.
