neither school has sold their allotment, 19th lowest priced 3rd party bowl ticket prices:
Cotton Bowl tickets are becoming a bargain<
^By ERIC OLSON=
^AP Sports Writer=
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) _ Tickets for the Cotton Bowl are so cheap that
a family of four could see the New Year's Day game between Nebraska
and Auburn in Dallas for less than $100.
The lowest price found Tuesday, on StubHub.com, was $12 for a
ticket with a face value of $90.
San Francisco-based StubHub is among the online marketplaces
that bring together ticket buyers and sellers. Company spokesman
Sean Pate said the so-called ``secondary market'' gives a true
indication of how hot _ or cold _ a ticket is.
Typically, fans go to the secondary market for hard-to-get
tickets _ and often pay significantly more than face value.
Buyers are getting the better end of the deal with the Cotton
Bowl.
TicketsNow.com had $15 tickets, and several other online brokers
had plenty listed for $20. Prime seats still go for several hundred
dollars, but what surprises Pate is that it would cost fans very
little to get a seat.
``Those tickets are dropping to unforeseen territory for a bowl
game of that magnitude,'' Pate said.
Neither Nebraska nor Auburn had sold out its allotment of 12,500
tickets, all priced at $90. All but about 3,500 of the 68,252
Cotton Bowl stadium seats have a face value of $90.
Omaha-based Ticket Express is getting 10 calls from people
trying to sell Cotton Bowl tickets for every one trying to buy,
president Chad Carr said.
Carr, like others in the travel and ticket business, say fans
aren't enamored with Dallas as a destination. Brokers say Nebraska
fans are let down after the Huskers lost to Oklahoma in the Big 12
championship game. Same goes for Auburn fans, who saw their Tigers'
national championship hopes end with a November loss to Georgia.
The 10:38 a.m. kickoff time also is difficult to overcome, Carr
said, as is the unpredictable January weather in Dallas.
At StubHub, the average price for a Cotton Bowl ticket is $90,
with $406 the highest paid so far. Pate said he expects the average
to fall as the game nears.
The average price is 19th among the 32 bowls and ranks behind
games such as the Texas Bowl ($100), Music City Bowl ($116),
Emerald Bowl ($125) and Alamo Bowl ($138).
The Bowl Championship Series title game, Pate said, is fetching
an average of $1,400.
Jason Randall, CEO of Austin-based Coast to Coast Tickets, said
he's not caught off-guard by the low Cotton Bowl ticket prices
because the stadium is large and the matchup pits teams from
distant places.
``When there's not a championship on the line, it makes it a lot
harder to justify the travel expense,'' Randall said. ``If (the
University of Texas) were playing in the Cotton Bowl against an
interesting opponent, maybe that would shake things up. As it is,
this game isn't that big a deal.''
