E-BAY, AL Groh, honor charges, Craig Littlepage, profiteering -- sounds like a racy University scandal, eh? Recent revelations about student guest ticket sales on the popular online auction site eBay have led to promises of investigation from administrators and Groh himself. In addition, student and alumni criticism of student ticket resale on independent Virginia sports Web sites has been harsh. Yet a quick examination of the facts and logic surrounding this matter reveals that the attention and disparagement placed on the resale of tickets is unwarranted.
Most might think that with all the attention paid to online ticket resale there must be hundreds of evil students selling tickets to the FSU and the Virginia Tech game online. In fact, as of Monday, there were five pairs of tickets to the FSU game and four pairs of tickets to the Virginia Tech game listed on eBay. While all of these tickets were "student guest tickets," pairs of non-general admission tickets have appeared in past weeks on eBay, so it's hardly right to condemn students as the sole cause of the online resale of U.Va. football tickets.
The Commonwealth of Virginia has no explicit laws governing the resale of event tickets. EBay permits the resale of event tickets, as long as the retail price of the tickets being sold is not listed, so there isn't a legal problem in selling the tickets. True, the back of a student guest ticket does read: "This ticket will not be honored if resold or offered for resale at more than the price indicated on the ticket." But has any sporting event ticket ever not had that disclaimer printed on its back? Plus, the line above that reads: "This ticket cannot be resold on the UVA premises except by authorized personnel." I guess the dozen scalpers hanging out by the AFC clock tower on Saturday were just a figment of my imagination.
The most bizarre rumor flying around regarding the eBay ticket sales was that the Honor Committee was investigating students who sold tickets on eBay. The claim is baseless, according to the Honor Committee, which noted that the online resale of student tickets would not qualify as an honor violation. While some would argue that student ticket dealers are "stealing" tickets from fellow students and their guests, the fact remains that there were as many as 3,000 student guest tickets on sale for the Virginia Tech game before it sold out and buyers did pay $40 a pop for them depending on the game -- they weren't raffled off.
One of the biggest complaints is that student sellers are making money by abusing a privilege. Students are not abusing the privilege; they're merely working the system to their advantage. Students are limited to only one pair of guest tickets to the Virginia Tech game so the "ticket-don" holding dozens of guest tickets racking up thousands in profits is unlikely to exist. In fact, the University should be proud of all the arbitragers buying low and selling high. It's capitalism at its finest.
Some people are indifferent to the issue of student ticket profiteering. What concerns them is the bi-annual "Hokie Invasion" that takes place at Scott Stadium during the rivalry game. Critics assert that all the resold student guest tickets are falling into hands of Virginia Tech fans, but this claim is impossible to investigate and a reach at best. There are between 2,000 and 3,000 guest tickets and approximately 36,000 season tickets so the simple mathematics dictate a season ticket is much more likely to fall into the hands of a Hokie than a guest ticket.
Virginia football coach Al Groh recently pledged on a radio show to investigate the matter, and Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage appeared at a recent Student Council meeting appealing for suggestions on how to stymie the online resale of football tickets. However, if the University really cared about stopping the practice, they would have enacted measures long ago. Either check student IDs before allowing entrance to the student section or make a University student escort any guest ticket holder before allowing admission to the game.
For those who criticize the profiteering involved with reselling guest tickets: Ask yourself, if you could purchase a pair of tickets for $80 and resell them in a week on eBay for twice the price, would you? And for those who criticize eBay ticket sales as the source of the thousands of Hokies in Scott Stadium every year: A couple hundred pairs of guest tickets exchanging hands on eBay is not the problem, and eliminating or reducing the amount of guest tickets available to students is certainly not the solution.
(Joe Schilling's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jschilling@cavalierdaily.com.)
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