WORLD CUP USA ’94 : COMMENTARY : Good Tickets Like Credit Cards--There Are Limits
I wanted good World Cup tickets. I wanted them in an instant. I wanted them from the comfort of my couch.
No way, the skeptics scolded me, I should have ordered them months ago, like every other average Joe and corporate pro.
Yeah, right.
Let me tell you folks something about this country: This is America. In America, no matter who you are or where you come from, if you have enough desire and fortitude and perseverance and strength and enterprise and will and determination and ambition and doggedness and tenacity and resolution and diligence and heart and you know the number and expiration date of your credit card, you can get anything you want.
And let me remind you folks of something else, an adage that dates back to the days of Aristotle: “Anything you ever need, from basketballs to brick walls, all it takes is just two phone calls.”
Tickets were there to be had, that’s for sure. In Friday’s Times alone, for instance, there were more than 125 classified ads offering World Cup seats. (By contrast, there were only seven ads offering used Cessna airplanes.) So it seemed to me it was a buyer’s market.
I had a plan:
--Call 800 numbers first. I figured good tickets might be pricey, so it would be nice to save a little cash with some toll-free phone action.
--Concentrate on games at the Rose Bowl, partly because it’s the best soccer venue in the country, partly because it has the largest capacity of any World Cup site and partly because it’s a lot closer to my West Hollywood home than the other eight World Cup stadiums.
--Target good tickets only. Why pay top dollar to sit your bottom in seats in which the soccer ball looks more like a Super Ball? Note: When I say “good tickets,” this excludes any seat at Tuesday’s Nigeria-Bulgaria game in Dallas, where tickets are still widely available in all price ranges pretty much through halftime.
On my first call, I got a busy signal. (This put my two-call theory immediately in doubt.)
On my second call, I got put on hold and was forced to listen to “Radar Love” by Golden Earring as I waited. Next.
On my third call, I got put on hold again and the Muzak this time was Meat Loaf. No.
On my fourth call, I got another busy signal.
On my fifth call, I dialed Domino’s and ordered a pepperoni pizza. I figured it was going to be a long day. Plus, Domino’s would sooner make their drivers pick up hitchhikers than put somebody on hold.
On my sixth call, I finally made my first contact. I asked for U.S.-Colombia tickets at the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. Category 3 tickets were $175 each, Category 2 were $200 and Category 1 $250. I reached for my wallet, but it instinctively had crawled away.
On my next call, U.S.-Colombia tickets were priced at $125, $150 and $200. This was a small step toward a reasonable economic goal, but it still pained me to realize that had I ordered tickets by mail months ago as part of a five-game package, the categories were priced at $25.50, $41 or $55 per game.
On my next five calls, two ticket agencies had nothing available for any U.S. game and three other brokers offered seats from $90 to $225. At this point, I kept staring at a newspaper ad I had saved for a car dealership in Costa Mesa--”Win World Cup Final Tickets! Come In and Register to Win 2 Tickets for the World Cup Finals!”--but I wasn’t in that 405 mood.
Finally, I found an agency offering a Category 3 U.S.-Colombia seat for $45. That’s right--only $45! Where are the seats, in Glendale?
When I checked on tickets for the June 26 U.S.-Romania game at the Rose Bowl, an agent said, “I’m out of those right now, but I might get some in later today.” What, is this, like the produce truck that arrives with fresh berries and melon at 4 o’clock?
“Well, what you’ve got to understand is that we buy and sell all day long,” said Jerry Langston of Chicago-based HotTix. “One minute I can’t do anything for you on Italy-Ireland, then an hour later I may get a block of 10. I’ll always tell people to check back or I take their name.”
Actually, although 97% of the World Cup’s 3.5 million tickets had been sold by Friday, seemingly most of them were still on sale at the right price. In fact, I don’t think anyone is actually going to be in the stadiums for these games. Rather, there will be 50,000 people wandering the parking lots holding up signs, “Need Two,” and another 50,000 wandering nearby with signs, “Have Two.”
I kept making calls. I kept getting put on hold, sometimes with Michael Bolton. (Doesn’t anyone play Mel Torme anymore?)
My next few calls for U.S.-Colombia yielded prices again in the $200 range.
So I came up with a new plan--Italy-Mexico at RFK Stadium in Washington on June 28.
Bad plan.
As it turns out, I’ve got a better chance of taking the Statue of Liberty to Times Square on New Year’s Eve than getting into RFK for that game.
“That’s a tough one,” Tri-Tickets Agency told me. “Washington’s a tough, tough ticket.”
So I went to the Pele of ticket brokers, Murray’s Tickets.
Murray’s had two Category 1 seats available for Italy-Mexico at $1,250 each. That’s twelve hundred fifty U.S. dollars.
What, Streisand singing both national anthems?
Frankly, I thought things were getting a bit steep. Sure, I’ve got deep pockets, but mostly they have lint in them.
I returned to my U.S.-Colombia pursuit for Wednesday, but now I couldn’t find anything under $85. Meanwhile, my wallet had gotten a court order putting it into protective custody.
All of which led me to an easy decision: I’ll just go watch the Anaheim Splash play the Detroit Neon in indoor soccer Wednesday at The Pond of Anaheim. It’s “Poster Night” and tickets are priced at $12, $10, $8 and $6, which gives me enough money left over to buy a used Cessna.
