Big Shakeup in Kentucky Derby Tickets: They’re More Expensive, Difficult to Buy

Box seats for the Kentucky Derby, like grandfather’s gold watch, have been passed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms.

That has led to a popular myth among the nearly 100,000 people who gather the first Saturday each May at Churchill Downs: There are among them a lucky few who actually own boxes for the annual Run for the Roses.

Wrong, said Churchill president Thomas Meeker.

“Nobody owns those boxes,” he said. “We’ve been called into divorce proceedings where they’re questioning who owns the box. We step in and tell them we do.”

Starting last year, Derby boxes kept in family or corporate hands for decades were suddenly removed from their previous users and awarded to someone else.

Soon after Meeker became president of the historic track in late 1984, he made it clear that tickets to the Derby are by invitation only. He said the list of who gets tickets from the thousands of people who ask for them is determined by the track, not by tradition.

Track officials won’t say exactly how many long-term Derby ticket holders are out of the picture now, but Meeker said about 20% of the 45,000 reserved seats have been assigned to different people in the last year.

That has turned a normally chaotic “aftermarket” for Derby tickets into even more of a free-for-all.

Scrambling for the coveted seats--whether it’s the upper deck seats in the Clubhouse high over the Churchill Downs track or the lowly bleacher seats in the Grandstand--is greater this year than ever before, say both anxious ticket seekers and scalpers.

The one ticket that scalpers don’t sell is the most coveted of all--seats on “Millionares Row,” the posh tables for 16 in the Skye Terrace. Seats at those tables are issued with great care, said track officials, and the price tag for a table is $5,000.

In the past, scalpers have asked about three times the face value of other tickets, but this year the norm is about four times face value.

Six-seat boxes for Derby Day and the day before sell for $300 and up and scalpers are asking--and getting--from $1,000 to $5,000.

Beverly Brumley, who works for Econocom USA in Memphis, Tenn., considers herself one of the lucky. She was assigned to find a box for Econocom’s chairman of the board, a thoroughbred owner from Paris, France.

The day after her advertisement appeared in two Louisville newspapers she got two calls from scalpers.

“We got one (offer) for $2,000 and one for $4,000,” she said. “That’s not bad. We’d heard awful rumors about paying $10,000.”

A Louisville man, who annually scalps dozens of Derby tickets, said he sold four boxes worth about $2,000 this year for more than $8,000. Before ticket prices went up last year, he said he normally cleared about $4,000.

Under Kentucy law, scalping is illegal.

Because of the decision to double prices after 10 years without an increase and to change the exclusive list of who does and does not go to the Derby, Meeker has been called everything from the Grinch, to Ebeneezer Scrooge, to unprintable names.

He said the cuts, which have some long-time Derbygoers watching on TV, were made in order to give seats to season-ticket holders and to new corporations in Louisville.

“The principle we’re trying to enforce now is we want to place Derby tickets with people who make a contribution to Churchill Downs or the community,” he said.

“There’s no secret to the fact that the way to get a box now is rent a box for the whole spring season,” said a prominent local attorney who wished to remain anonymous. “It’s also no secret that it helps to be a shareholder. Of course it helps to know a few directors.”

Meeker said that owning a box for the whole season, being a shareholder or a friend of Board member would help, but it wouldn’t guarantee a seat for the Derby.

“That isn’t the quid pro quo,” he said. “There are people with season boxes on the waiting list. There have been more cases where knowing the Board member hasn’t helped than those where it has.”

What does make a difference, Meeker said, is who you are and what you mean to racing and Churchill Downs in particular.