MSU students who missed out on their opportunity to purchase Final Four tickets have a new hope.
The Ticket Reserve is a Chicago-based, sanctioned marketplace that manages and distributes access rights to seats for live sporting events. Their Web site, ticketreserve.com, gives fans a chance to obtain Final Four tickets at face value.
The way the site works is fans essentially bet on a team they want to see in the Final Four. The fan purchases Event Certificates, which are tied to a particular team.
Certificate prices vary, typically ranging from $10 to $100. The cost depends on each team's likelihood of advancing to the Final Four, so certificates for higher-seeded teams will be more expensive than those for lower-seeded teams.
The Ticket Reserve works as a stock market, of sorts. As a team progresses through the tournament, the value of their certificates will increase. The holder can trade, sell or hold onto their certificates at any point.
If their team makes it to the Final Four, the holder is mailed tickets, gaining bargain-priced entry to the game. But if the team misses the Final Four, the certificate expires and the holder pays the cost of the certificate.
"If you want to see your team in the Final Four, this is one of the only ways to secure face-value tickets," said Ticket Reserve project manager Jeff Heckman. "The money we're charging for you to use the site is a risk, but there's a high reward if you get the tickets at that price."
As of Thursday, there were no bids for Final Four certificates for MSU.
Ticket Reserve spokesman Todd Gershwin said things can change quickly, for he said there is no limit to the amount the certificates can be sold for.
"The value is only limited to whatever the market will bear," Gershwin said.
The technology of the site also allows potential bidders to search for certificates in a certain price range, ? la priceline.com, Gershwin said. It will automatically match the bidder's price with current bids in that range, he said.
Shortly after the company's founding in late 2001, it began development of a Super Bowl program, which works in the same fashion as the system currently used for Final Four bidding.
As a result of the system, 40 people who otherwise wouldn't have had any way of getting tickets to the Super Bowl got to go, Gershwin said.
Some MSU students say the risk involved in bidding is worth the potential payoff.
Pre-veterinary sophomore Anna Lang said while she probably wouldn't take part in the bidding, the site is employing a novel concept.
"It seems like a good idea if you're a big fan, and you're not putting up too much money without a guarantee of a payoff," she said.
Katie Veenhuis, a supply chain management sophomore, said the idea behind the bidding system makes sense, and it's likely a lot of people will participate in it.
"I wouldn't participate in it because I don't have that much money to possibly throw away," Veenhuis said. "But the risk could come with a big return."
